The Russian Presidency (Kremlin) refused, yesterday, to deny the dismissal of the Navy commander, Admiral Nikolai Evmenov, announced by the press
After a series of setbacks once morest Ukraine in the Black Sea, he limited himself to mentioning that certain decrees were secret. Russian media outlets Fontanka and Izvestia announced on Sunday that Admiral Nikolai Evmenov had been fired and replaced by Admiral Alexander Moisseyev, until now head of the Northern Fleet. “There are confidential decrees.
I can’t comment on them. There have been no public decrees on this matter,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov responded regarding Evmenov, quoted by the French agency AFP.
The appointment of a new Russian fleet commander is normally announced by presidential decree. If the replacement is confirmed, it will be an important remodeling within the Russian military command.
In two years of war, Ukraine achieved a series of successes in the Black Sea that allowed the reopening of a maritime corridor for the export of its cereals, defying Russia’s bombing threats.
The Ukrainian Army stated in early February that around a third of Russian warships had been disabled in the area. According to his official biography, Admiral Nikolai Evmenov, 61, has been in charge of the entire Russian fleet since May 2019. Before that, Evmenov, a submariner, had been commander of the Northern Fleet.
Crimea, a peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014, is also regularly hit by Ukrainian air, sea and missile drone attacks, as it is important for the logistics of Russian troops.
At the beginning of March, Ukraine announced the destruction of the most modern Russian patrol ship, the “Serguey Kotov”, hit by maritime drones near the Kerch Strait, which connects Crimea to Russia.
The operation was claimed by the Ukrainian military secret services (GUR) with the cooperation of the Navy. Among other successes, in September 2023, Ukraine bombed the Black Sea Fleet headquarters in Sevastopol, Crimea. In spring 2022, at the beginning of the conflict, he managed to sink the “Moskva”, the flagship of the Russian fleet.
Despite successes at sea and following the failure of a counter-offensive in the summer, Ukraine faces a new Russian offensive in areas it had reconquered, with Moscow announcing, on Sunday, the seizure of Avdiivka (Donetsk).
Ukraine has criticized Western allies’ hesitations in supplying weapons, particularly out of fear that it would be used to attack positions on Russian territory.
The ongoing war was triggered by the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Since then, Moscow has declared the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporijia as annexed to the Russian Federation, following having done the same to Crimea in 2014.
Ukraine and most of the international community do not recognize Russian sovereignty in the five regions. Kiev demands Russia’s withdrawal from Ukrainian territory, including Crimea, as a precondition for eventual peace talks.
The number of civilian and military casualties from the war, which has entered its third year, is unknown, but several sources, including the UN, admit that it will be high.