A short message and the sad picture of a half-sunken frigate dated 3 March 2022 are seen as proof that the Ukrainian navy sank its flagship "Hetman Sagaidachny" itself. The Ukrainian defence minister has apparently confirmed this action.
The 3,500-tonne displacement Krivak III-class ship was originally built at a shipyard in Kerch on the east coast of the island of Crimea as the last of the eight Krivaks intended for the Soviet Coast Guard and was put into Ukrainian service in 1993. The 30-year-old frigate was undergoing repairs in one of the three large shipyards in the harbour city of Mykolaiv when the commander received the order to open the valves and detonate an explosive charge. This was to prevent it from falling into the hands of Russian troops and being exploited for propaganda purposes, even if it was not currently operational. This could have happened in the next few days. In its better days, the frigate was often seen in the Mediterranean, for example as a participant in the joint operations "Active Endeavour" in 2008 and even in "Ocean Shield" in the Horn of Africa in 2013. She only returned from there in November for a stay at the shipyard.
The Ukrainian navy had stationed the majority of its 67 units in the port of Sevastopol. With the annexation of Crimea, the Russian navy took over three quarters of the units stationed in Sevastopol and, in addition to the flagship, left Ukraine with only obsolete Grisha-U fighters, Natya minesweepers and patrol boats with a few SS-N-2C/D Styx missiles, plus one Ropucha and one Polnochny landing ship of noteworthy size. Their new home port was Odessa.
Further units were to follow - a promise that was, however, broken with the start of the incidents in the Donbass region in 2014. With this move, Moscow not only retained the most operational frigates, landing ships and missile boats, but also three quarters of the 8,000 Ukrainian naval personnel in Crimea. An easy game when Russian pay is significantly higher than Ukrainian pay. Before that, the navy had 14,000 personnel.
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Moin,
In thirty years of service, the Ukrainian navy has not managed to maintain its "flagship" properly and thoroughly. No modernisation work has been undertaken.
This warship will only have one future: after salvage, it will be burnt. The Ukrainian armed forces will not be able to raise the money for the necessary repairs.
A small correction: after 2014 (after the incorporation of Crimea into the Russian Federation), the Russian Black Sea Fleet had only the Ukrainian submarine of the "Foxtrot" class in its inventory for a short time; all other former Ukrainian units lie in a part of the port of Sevastopol and were never in service with the Russian naval fleet; their perspective is also clearly in scrapping yards.