From: Bloomberg
Bloomberg) Russia has based its Black Sea fleet in Crimea for 240 years. Now President Vladimir Putin is at risk of losing the flagship naval hub as Ukraine steps up attacks in the occupied peninsula.
The assaults have forced Russia to move its ships further from harm’s way, almost a decade after Putin annexed Crimea with the goal of preserving the fleet’s presence there as Kyiv drew closer to the US and Europe.
“No Crimean port is safe any more for Russian warships,” said Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies in Moscow. Ukraine has “basically ejected the fleet from Crimea.”
Its latest attack by a cruise missile claimed a large Russian landing ship at the eastern Crimean port of Feodosia on Tuesday. In all, Russia has lost at least 20 vessels including warships, a submarine and landing craft since Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, according to the Ukrainian Armed Forces and independent assessments by the open-source intelligence outlet Oryx.
Voice of Ukraine 