Ukraine’s Surprise Strike on Russian Fleet Hobbles Putin’s Donbas Strategy

Source: WSJ.com. Brett Forrest in Mykolaiv, Ukraine, and Nancy A. Youssef in Washington

Attack on navy ships at Berdyansk port could limit Russia’s ability to fire on eastern Ukraine, analysts say; ‘major logistical blow’

A surprise Ukrainian strike on a Russian ship at a southern port city last month could curb Moscow’s plan to expand its hold on the Donbas region, eliminating a key military advantage in the Russian attack plan, Ukrainian military analysts and U.S. officials said.

The March 24 offensive against Russian navy ships docked at a captured port in Berdyansk on the Azov Sea was the first major strike on the Russian fleet, Ukrainian and U.S. officials said. The attack destroyed a ship laden with supplies, drove others back into the sea, and damaged the port facilities.

The strike ended the presumption that Russian ships could attack without the threat of a Ukrainian reply. And it has limited Russia’s ability to fire missiles and artillery as it pivots its assault toward Donbas in Ukraine’s east, said retired Adm. James Foggo, who commanded U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa.

Hours after the strike, Russia moved its ships in port out to sea, making it harder for them to attack Ukraine’s cities and preventing them from supporting ground forces.

“It’s a major logistical blow,” Adm. Foggo said. “It’s an ‘aha!’ moment for the Russians. Despite the damage they have done inside Ukraine, Ukrainian forces are still capable of conducting offensive strikes with precision.”

In the nearly two weeks since the strike, Russia’s navy hasn’t launched any major attacks on Ukrainian cities, although it has struck targets around a few of them. On Sunday, missiles from Russian ships struck the Ukrainian port city of Odessa, hitting infrastructure.

Russia’s military made port cities a priority during its assault into Ukraine. It seized the city of Berdyansk, a key foothold for its future attacks in strategically important cities such as Mariupol, just days into its invasion of Ukraine, soon boasting of the advantage the port would afford its war effort.

Quickly putting the port to use, Russia landed huge ships carrying as much as 2,000 tons of supplies each for its ground forces in the Ukrainian south. The Russians ejected Ukrainian cargo ships, dredgers and a tug, then berthed their own ships carrying multiple-launch rocket systems to provide cover for troops moving into the region.

The ships at Berdyansk were only lightly defended, as the nearest Ukrainian forces were about 60 miles away.

“The Russians thought Ukraine didn’t have any capability to reach them,” said Andrii Ryzhenko, a former Ukrainian navy captain now with the Center for Defense Strategies, a Kyiv think tank with close ties to the military. “But Ukraine had the capability.”

By the early weeks of the war, Russia had as many as 22 ships in the Black Sea and another dozen in the Azov Sea, U.S. officials said. At least half of those in the Azov Sea were docked at Berdyansk—“sitting ducks,” said Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington.

“It’s just an example of how cavalier Russia’s operations have been about keeping ships at shore,” Mr. Clark said.

Russia had major advantages over the Ukrainian navy for nearly a decade. It captured and destroyed much of the Ukrainian navy at the port of Sevastopol during Moscow’s 2014 seizure of Crimea, expanding its influence over the Black Sea. And in the run-up to the Feb. 24 invasion, Russia moved much of its navy from as far as the Baltic Sea toward Ukraine’s shores.

The Azov Sea, a small, shallow body of water bounded by Russia, Ukraine and the Crimean Peninsula, has been strategically important for centuries. Ships operating off the Azov Sea coast took part in the Russian assault on the southern city of Mariupol, military analysts said, firing artillery into Mariupol with little risk from Ukraine’s defenses. The ships also held supplies for nearby ground forces and provided another line of defense to troops and tanks entering Mariupol.

The Azov Sea is also the fastest supply route between Russia and Crimea, because Ukrainian forces destroyed the rail lines between the two in 2014. From the Russian port of Temryuk, it is faster for Moscow to deliver troops and supplies by sea to Berdyansk than to drive them over the bridge that spans the Kerch Strait, then north through Crimea and eastward over a strip of captured Ukrainian coastline.

On March 24, Ukraine fired a Tochka-U ballistic missile at the port, Mr. Ryzhenko said. The missile struck the Saratov, a Cold War-era landing vessel designed to ferry troops and equipment ashore through a ramp at the bow. As the Saratov foundered, other ships fled the Berdyansk port under a plume of smoke. The attack also damaged the port, according to satellite images.

U.S. defense officials warned that Russia could be making adjustments in the sea, much as it is doing around the Ukrainian capital. Russia said it was repositioning its forces around Kyiv, which U.S. officials described as a regrouping based on battlefield losses and logistical challenges.

Since the strike, Russia had withdrawn all but three ships from the Azov Sea as of last week, a U.S. senior defense official said, hindering Moscow’s ability to supply troops in the Ukrainian south.

Meanwhile, the Kremlin late last month said it was shifting its mission to Ukraine’s east, aiming to consolidate control over Donbas, its initial plan to quickly take Kyiv fading under relentless Ukrainian resistance.

The Berdyansk strike could also have a wide-reaching impact on the ability of Russia’s navy to support its army.

With the damaged Berdyansk port off limits to ships for weeks, Russia’s capacity to land troops there and in the vicinity of Odessa has diminished, especially as nearby Mykolaiv remains in Ukrainian control, analysts said.

“After the attack on landing ships in Berdyansk, the Russian Federation will be forced to take several, possibly two or three, landing ships from the Black Sea to the Azov Sea,” said Andrii Klymenko, a defense and maritime analyst with the Black Sea Institute of Strategic Studies, a Ukrainian think tank. “This will weaken landing capabilities.”