Ukraine hits Russian warship, loses ground in east
Offensive falters; ability to reach far targets rises
KYIV — Ukraine scored a major success on Tuesday when it struck a Russian warship at port in Crimea, one of the most significant attacks against Moscow’s Black Sea Fleet in months. But in another setback for their ground campaign, Ukrainian officials acknowledged that they had all but retreated from the eastern city of Marinka after a monthslong battle to defend it.
The two developments underscored the diverging fortunes of the two combatants this winter in a war that has largely settled into a deadlock: Ukraine racking up naval successes in the Black Sea and Crimea, where it is putting Russia on the defensive, and Russia pressing its attack on battlefields in the east after blunting a Ukrainian counteroffensive.
A day after Russia said it had taken complete control of Marinka, General Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s top military commander, spoke in sober terms about the fight, comparing it with the scorched-earth battle for Bakhmut, the eastern city that fell to Russia in May. Like Bakhmut, Marinka held limited strategic value, but is now a trophy in ruins for Moscow.
“The situation is exactly the same as it was in Bakhmut,” Zaluzhny said at a news conference. “Street by street, block by block, and our soldiers were being targeted. And the result is what it is.”
Ukraine’s forces, he said, have retreated to the outskirts of the city and set up some positions behind it, indicating that the cost of staying and fighting was too high. Every inch of Ukrainian land is vital, Zaluzhny said, but “the lives of our fighters are more important to us.”
Hours earlier, the Ukrainian air force said that it had destroyed the Novocherkassk, a large landing ship, in the Crimean port of Feodosia overnight. Russia’s Defense Ministry told the Tass state news agency that the ship had been damaged in an attack using “aircraft-guided missiles,” but did not say whether the vessel had been permanently disabled.
Videos of the attack that appeared to have been taken by residents and were released by the Ukrainian air force show an explosion that produced a large fireball, followed by a giant cloud of smoke and flames billowing into the night sky. The footage could not be immediately verified, but Sergei Aksyonov, the Russian-installed governor of Crimea, said that the attack had started a fire in Feodosia. One person was killed and two others were wounded in the assault, he said.
“The fleet in Russia is getting smaller and smaller!” Mykola Oleshchuk, the commander of Ukraine’s air force, wrote in a post on the Telegram messaging app celebrating the strike. He noted that last year, Ukrainian missiles sank the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.
The strike on the Novocherkassk followed another gain for Ukrainian forces: The military said it had shot down five Russian fighter jets in three days. Analysts said that the downing of the bombers — one of the biggest weekly losses for the Russian air force since the war began — could ease the pressure on Ukrainian troops operating in some of the hottest spots on the front line.
The Ukrainian military has long maintained that the war cannot be won without taking aim at Russian assets and operations in Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014. In recent months, Ukraine has sharply accelerated the pace of strikes on the peninsula, which Russia’s military uses as a logistics hub for its hold on southern Ukraine — stockpiling fuel, ammunition, and other supplies to be funneled to the battlefields — and as a launchpad for attacks.
The Black Sea Fleet has fired devastating precision cruise missiles at cities and towns deep inside Ukraine. In an attempt to reduce the threat, the Ukrainian military has repeatedly targeted the fleet this year — damaging a warship in August and hitting the fleet’s headquarters a month later.
Those attacks were significant achievements for a country without warships of its own, and rare successes in a year marked by failed efforts to break through Russian defensive lines on the battlefield.
The battle for Marinka illustrated a defining feature of Russia’s invasion, one that analysts say gives Moscow’s forces a big advantage: Its willingness to send wave after wave of troops into fierce assaults, accepting a staggering number of casualties but counting on superior numbers in soldiers and ammunition to wear down the enemy.
It is the same approach Russia has taken in the nearby city of Avdiivka, where it has been attacking for months in the face of fierce Ukrainian resistance. The Russian assaults come as Ukraine is encountering dwindling support from Western allies.
A suburb of Donetsk, Marinka once had a population of 10,000 and streets lined with schools, shops, and even a museum. Today no civilians are left and the place has been reduced to rubble.
“Ukrainian forces held Marinka for almost two years as the Russians annihilated it street by street, and then house by house,” Zaluzhny said on Tuesday.
The capture of Marinka could allow Russian forces to turn their sights to the nearby towns of Kurakove, Vuhleda, and Pokrovsk, bringing them closer to achieving Russia’s goal of capturing the entire Donbas region. Zaluzhny said Ukrainian troops had “prepared a defensive line outside” Marinka, suggesting that his military would try to thwart Russia’s efforts to advance farther.