Black Sea Fleet: lost units and positions

Another ship loss

At the beginning of July, the Russian navy lost "D-106", one of the five small Ondatra-class landing craft (project 1176, 150 tonnes) stationed in the Black Sea. The boat ran aground off Mariupol on one of the mines laid by the Russian navy itself.

Snake Island (Smijinyi)

Just a few days later - at the other end of the Black Sea - the Russian armed forces abandoned the much-contested "Snake Island" after fierce fighting and handed it over to the Ukrainian forces "as a gesture of goodwill", now that it had "fulfilled its task".

The somewhat different narrative

From the Ukrainian side, this story reads somewhat differently, as the Frankfurter Rundschau reported on 13 July. The Russian flagship of the Black Sea Fleet "Moskva" had already guaranteed a certain air superiority in the area around the island off the Ukrainian coast since the capture of Snake Island in the first days of the war. After the sinking of the "Moskva" by Ukrainian missile fire and thus the loss of this protective shield, Ukraine gradually forced the enemy to give up the conquest by decimating the smaller units supplying/connecting the island (fast small combat boats "Raptor" and small landing craft "Serna") and by firing on the Russian facilities on the island, primarily using the "Bayraktar" drones. Russia had not succeeded in developing this island into a "stationary air defence cruiser" and master of the western Black Sea.

Ukrainian forces raise the flag after the recapture of Snake Island on 7 July. Photo: Ukrainian Defence Ministry

Billions in losses

Ukraine is now showing documentary material on the recapture of the island and claims that the Ukrainian operations on the island, as well as the successes at sea (including previously unknown "significant damage" to the Grigorovich frigate "Admiral Essen") and ultimately the self-destruction of the missile systems before fleeing the island, caused damage to Russian forces totalling billions of dollars.