The commander of Ukraine’s Navy said in a rare interview that the Russian naval blockade of Odesa had been broken. He also described how the war is transforming naval tactics says Marc Santora.
Marc Santora has been chronicling the battle of the Black Sea for nearly two years and interviewed the naval commander in Odesa.
In a small, hidden office in the port city of Odesa, the commander of the Ukrainian Navy keeps two trophies representing successes in the Black Sea.
One is the lid from the missile tube used in April 2022 to sink the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, the Moskva, a devastating blow that helped chase Russian warships from the Ukrainian coast. On the lid is a painting of a Ukrainian soldier raising his middle finger to the ship as it bursts into flames.
The other is a key used to arm a British-made Storm Shadow missile that slammed into the headquarters of the Russian fleet in Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula.
“We dreamed of making a beautiful recreation park for children in this place, to take away the center of evil that is there now,” said Vice Adm. Oleksiy Neizhpapa, the Ukrainian naval commander.
He held the key in his hand, and although his eyes were tired, he said there was nothing to do but fight.
“Sevastopol is my hometown,” he said. “For me, it is my small homeland, where I was born, where my children were born. So, of course, I dream that the time will come, hopefully soon, that we will return to our naval base in Sevastopol.”
Despite having no warships of its own, Ukraine has over the course of the war shifted the balance of power in the naval conflict. Its use of unmanned maritime drones and growing arsenal of long-range anti-ship missiles — along with critical surveillance provided by Western allies and targeted assaults by Ukraine’s Air Force and special operations forces — have allowed Ukraine to blunt the advantages of the vastly more powerful Russian Navy.
“At this point, the Russian Black Sea Fleet is primarily what naval strategists term ‘a fleet in being’: It represents a potential threat that needs to be vigilantly guarded against, but one that remains in check for now,” said Scott Savitz, a senior engineer at the RAND Corporation, a federally financed center that conducts research for the United States military. “Remarkably, Ukraine has achieved all this without a substantial fleet of its own.”
Admiral Neizhpapa cautioned that Ukraine remains vastly outgunned on the Black Sea. It lacks the battlecruisers, destroyers, frigates and submarines that populate the Russian fleet. Russian planes still dominate the skies above the sea, and Russia still uses its fleet to launch long-range missiles at Ukrainian towns and cities, threatening armed forces and civilians alike.
On Wednesday, a missile struck a commercial ship pulling into the port of Odesa, killing the pilot and wounding three crew members. It was the first civilian vessel hit since shipping to Odesa resumed in late August.
The Russia Navy also dominates the Sea of Azov, a body of water connected to the Black Sea by the narrow Strait of Kerch, and is increasingly using Azov ports in the occupied cities of Mariupol and Berdiansk to help alleviate logistical challenges on land.
Ukraine has nevertheless managed to negate some of those advantages and lately has gone on the offensive. Over the last two months, it has launched both stealthy nighttime operations by small units on jet skis and powerful missile strikes. Those strikes have hit not just the Sevastopol headquarters but also a Kilo-class submarine and a shipbuilding plant in eastern Crimea, an attack that damaged a new missile-carrying Russian warship.
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Anna Lukinova, Nataliia Novosolova and Anastasia Kuznietsova contributed reporting.
Marc Santora has been reporting from Ukraine since the beginning of the war with Russia.
He was previously based in London as an international news editor focused on breaking news events and earlier the bureau chief for East and Central Europe, based in Warsaw. He has also reported extensively from Iraq and Africa.
A version of this article appears in print on Nov. 13, 2023, Section A, Page 9 of the New York edition with the headline: Ukraine, With No Warships, Uses Innovation to Thwart Russia’s Navy. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
A pier overlooking the Black Sea in Odesa. Despite its lack of warships, Ukraine has managed to break the Russian blockade of the city. Credit...Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times.
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