Despite Recent Damage, Russia Still Has Plenty Of Cruise Missile Ships

The Black Sea Fleet still has as many as five intact Kalibr shooters

Two apparently damaged frigates in Novorossiysk. Vantor imagery

This story was commissioned by Euromaidan Press. Since Substack pays only around a fifth of my bills, I have no choice but to take on a lot of freelance work. I still want my Substack audience to know where to read those freelance stories, however. Hence this excerpt.

The Russian navy still has enough missile-armed warships in its battered Black Sea Fleet to sustain Kalibr cruise missile attacks on Ukrainian cities, if recent launches are any indication.

Overnight on Aug. 19, an unscathed Russian corvette lobbed as many as eight Kalibrs at Ukraine. Seven were intercepted. The eighth struck the Antonov Aircraft Plant in Kyiv, according to the open-source monitor OSINT Warfare. Ukrainian commanders had hoped that wouldn’t be possible. A week earlier, they thought they had knocked the Kalibr shooters out of the fight.

Overnight on Aug. 12, Ukrainian drones and missiles targeted the Black Sea Fleet’s main anchorage in Novorossiysk in southern Russia. Russians on the ground recorded fireballs billowing into the night sky, seemingly indicating significant damage to the port or its moored warships, potentially including the Black Sea Fleet’s seven or eight surviving frigates, corvettes, and submarines that are compatible with the 2,500-km Kalibr.

The Ukrainian general staff in Kyiv claimed its forces had struck three Kalibr carriers—the frigates Admiral Makarov and Admiral Essen and a Buyan-M corvette—as well as a lightly armed guard ship. But the uncertainty was, and still is, high. Even the general staff stressed its munitions had inflicted “varying degrees” of damage “according to preliminary information.”

“Information is being clarified,” the general staff stressed.

When the sun rose over the following days, commercial satellites snapped high-resolution photos of Novorossiysk, helping analysts assess damage from the Aug. 12 strikes. The photos were hard to interpret. Yes, there were dark patches on the hulls of the two frigates and single corvette, but the discoloration didn’t necessarily indicate drone or missile damage—to say nothing of confirming serious damage.

The pro-Ukraine Conflict Intelligence Team concluded Admiral Makarov and Admiral Essen “sustained damage in the area of their launchers,” potentially impacting the ships’ ability to fire Kalibrs. But even CIT conceded that “the extent of the damage remains unclear.”

Read the rest at Euromaidan Press.