2023-09-26 10:02:00
(CNN) — Russian warships continued to launch attacks on Ukraine following Kyiv’s claim that the commander of Moscow’s Black Sea Fleet was killed last Friday, while President Volodymyr Zelensky praised the arrival of US Abrams tanks in the country.
A spokesman for the Ukrainian Navy said on national television Monday that while Russia was still launching attacks from the Black Sea, they looked, by comparison, like operations involving “a headless running chicken.”
“Right now, they (the Russian Navy) lost the person who actually manages all this, and his staff, who manages the fleet together with him. This is a large cluster that requires a large number of managers to run all the processes so that it (the fleet) works as a single mechanism. Let’s imagine that the central part of this mechanism stops working,” said Ukrainian Navy spokesman Dmytro Pletenchuk.
Pletenchuk said that Russian President Vladimir Putin “does not control the actual operation of ships at sea” and relies on his admirals who know “their means and forces, their personnel, how to manage them, how to best deploy them.”
“Therefore, from now on they will have respective problems with the control of the troops,” he said.
Pletenchuk’s comments came following Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces said Russian Admiral Viktor Sokolov, as well as 33 other officers, were killed in the attack on the Black Sea headquarters in Sevastopol last Friday, in perhaps the most audacious attack by Ukrainian forces once morest the occupied territories of the Crimean peninsula so far.
More than 100 Russian servicemen were wounded in the special operation called “Crab Trap,” which was timed to strike while senior members of the Russian Navy were meeting, Special Operations Forces said.
Commander of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, Vice Admiral Viktor Sokolov during a farewell ceremony in Sevastopol, Crimea, on September 27, 2022. (Credit: Alexey Pavlishak/Archyde.com)
CNN cannot independently confirm Ukraine’s claims regarding Solokov or the number of victims. CNN has contacted Russia’s Defense Ministry for comment.
Moscow said a serviceman is missing as a result of Ukraine’s attack on Sevastopol.
Ukraine has been increasingly attacking strategic Russian targets in Crimea, the Black Sea region in southern Ukraine that has been occupied by Moscow since 2014. Ukraine has not given up hope of taking it back.
Ukrainian Defense Intelligence spokesman Andrii Yusov said Russia was using Crimea as a “logistical hub” and that “the ultimate goal, of course, is the deoccupation of Ukrainian Crimea.”
An M1A1 Abrams tank during a training exercise in Bemowo Piskie, Poland, Nov. 25, 2022. (Credit: Staff Sgt. Matthew A. Foster/U.S. Army National Guard)
Abrams tanks arrive
Western arms supplies have played a key role in helping the vastly outgunned Ukrainian forces defend themselves once morest Russian attacks, as well as carry out their own longer-range attacks beyond the front lines.
That has angered Moscow, and over the weekend Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused the United States and other countries of being “directly at war with us.”
In the latest arrival of key weaponry, the first batch of US Abrams tanks arrived in Ukraine, the Pentagon and Zelensky confirmed on Monday.
“The mere presence of Abrams tanks serves as a powerful deterrent. By having these tanks in its arsenal, the Ukrainian military can more effectively deter aggressive actions,” Pentagon spokesman Major Charlie Dietz said Monday.
The tanks are a long-awaited capability for Ukraine and add a powerful land component to troops that have already endured more than a year and a half of war.
President Zelensky said tanks were “preparing to reinforce our brigades.”
The United States began training Ukrainian forces on how to operate the tanks in May in Germany. The 31 tanks destined for Ukraine had been remodeled and prepared for shipment for several months, and Last month his transfer was officially approved.
Attacks on port infrastructure
After the Ukrainian attack on Sevastopol last Friday, a wave of Russian attacks hit the southern Ukrainian port city of Odessa overnight Monday and early Tuesday, Ukrainian officials said.
Drones attacked Odessa for more than two hours in the early hours of Tuesday, damaging port infrastructure in the Izmail district, according to Oleh Kiper, head of the Odessa regional military administration in Ukraine.
It comes a day following Russian strikes killed at least two people and caused “significant damage” to the city, Kiper said. One of the victims was found under the rubble of a warehouse where grain was stored, he said.
The Ukrainian military alleged that Russia’s attack on Odessa was a violation of international humanitarian law as it targeted both troops and civilian infrastructure, including energy supplies. The defense forces also said the attack was a “pathetic attempt at retaliation” for the attack on the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
Monday’s attack damaged the city’s port and electrical infrastructure, as well as granaries, warehouses and several private homes in the city’s suburbs, Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office said.
Ukraine’s Energy Minister said Monday that around 1,000 users were without electricity and that a “large-scale repair campaign” was underway.
Russian forces used drones, hypersonic missiles, cruise missiles and an Iranian-made submarine in the assault, Ukraine’s defense forces said. 19 drones and 11 missiles were shot down.
The remains of the downed weapons damaged some warehouses and private homes, and barns were damaged by the hypersonic missile attack.
This image released on September 25 shows a building damaged following a Russian military attack in Odessa, Ukraine. (Credit: Odessa Regional Prosecutor’s Office/Archyde.com)
When asked to comment on the Odessa attacks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov directed questions to the Russian Defense Ministry to discuss “specific military operations.”
Moscow’s forces have repeatedly attacked the southern port following the collapse of the Black Sea grain deal in July, which allowed Ukrainian ships to bypass the Russian blockade of Ukrainian Black Sea ports and sail safely through the waterway to Turkey’s Bosphorus Strait to reach global markets.
Many of the world’s poorest nations rely heavily on Ukrainian grain and Russia has been accused of weaponizing the threat of global hunger during the war once morest its neighbor.
Russian forces also bombed the nearby region of Kherson – a major shipbuilding industry along the Black Sea – with attacks that killed at least six people and wounded five on Monday, Ukrainian officials said.
A 73-year-old man and a 70-year-old woman were among the dead following Russian forces dropped four bombs on the southern Ukrainian town of Beryslav, according to Oleksandr Prokudin, head of the Kherson regional military administration.
Over the past day, Russian forces launched 87 attacks in the Kherson region, Prokudin said, attacking residential areas, medical buildings, educational institutions and critical infrastructure.
Civilians have fled intense Russian bombing and only a quarter of the population remains in Beryslav, according to Prokudin.
“In the last two weeks, almost 100 children and their families have left the dangerous coastal communities” of the Kherson region, he said.
— CNN’s Olya Voitovych, Rob Pitcheta, Anna Chernova, Mariya Knight, Haley Britzky and Alex Marquardt contributed reporting.
1695734338
#Ukraine #Russian #ships #continue #launching #attacks #commanders #alleged #death #Abrams #tanks #arrive
