Ukraine has a port on the Caspian Sea for the first time

Ukraine struck a target in Russia’s Dagestan region for the first time on Wednesday, according to local and Ukrainian officials, eyewitnesses and Russian and Ukrainian media. The military port of Kaspiysk on the Caspian Sea was attacked by Ukrainian drones about 1,000 kilometers from the front lines.

According to the Independent Russian Navy, it is home to the Caspian Fleet and the Russian Navy’s coastal forces, including the Naval Forces. Astra media outlet. “The fleet carried out missile attacks on Ukraine, and the 177th Marine Regiment took part in combat operations in the Kherson and Zaporizhia regions,” the release said.

Although both sides agree that the port was attacked, the results are disputed. Ukrainian sources say at least one Russian ship was damaged, while the Russians claim all drones were shot down before any ships were hit, but the shrapnel injured a teenager.

“For the first time during the large-scale invasion of Ukraine, a drone struck ships of the Caspian Fleet of the Russian Navy,” Alexander Kovalenko, head of the Countering Disinformation Department of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, said on Telegram. “Later, the media reported that in Kaspiysk, as a result of the attack, combat ships from Project 11661 class ships Tatarstan And Dagestan were damaged.”

The head of the Dagestan regional government had a different opinion.

“This morning, air defense forces destroyed an unmanned aerial vehicle over the Caspian Sea,” Sergei Melikov said on Telegram.

Video emerging from the scene indicates that neither position is completely accurate.

One video shows a drone, which appears to be a Ukrainian-made Aeroprakt A-22 ultralight aircraft converted into a one-way attack drone, flying through the constant cracking of air defenses and eventually exploding upon collision between the ships. Kovalenko claims the video shows the drone hitting near “the mooring zone of a small rocket boat from Project21631 and a rocket boat from Project 12418of which the only representative is in the Caspian fleet Stupinets.”

However, it is difficult to determine from the quality of the video whether ships were directly affected or suffered damage.

“As far as I can see from the video, it has been decommissioned Tarantula class Stupinets The corvette was not hit by a Ukrainian drone,” said a retired Russian naval officer using @Capt_Navy Twitter The war zone. “In any case, the ship has already been withdrawn from the fleet and will be decommissioned in 2023.”

Other videos, taken from different angles and further away, show the drone crashing in a ball of flames, but with no apparent secondary explosions indicative of an attack on ammunition or fuel supplies.

The following video shows Russians fleeing the explosion.

Low-resolution satellite images collected after the attack do not appear to show much, if any, damage to the port or ships, according to an open-source researcher using the Twitter handle @MT_Anderson. The satellite image, he added, also shows that most ships had dispersed from the port at the time the photo was taken.

In addition to the port being affected, the nearby Makhachkala Airport temporarily suspended operations due to the drone strike. Astra reported.

Regardless of the outcome, the attack is significant in several respects.

As we have noted in the past, Iran has largely used the Caspian Sea and its ports to ship missiles and other weapons to Russia because that route was considered safe from Ukrainian attacks. Furthermore, this marks a new target for the Russian Navy. In June, they began launching Kalibr long-range cruise missiles from the Sea of ​​Azov instead of the Black Sea. That’s because it became more dangerous for them to launch from the western Black Sea after repeated attacks by Ukrainian missiles and air and sea drones.

“Kaspiysk is more than a thousand kilometers away from the suspected launch site and the drone, a modified light aircraft, covered this distance without any problems and in daylight!” Kovalenko noted. “Hundreds of kilometers through Russian air defenses, not a small, compact object, but a light aircraft!”

“Yes,” he added, “this is the first attack on the Russians in the Caspian Sea during the entire period of the large-scale invasion of Ukraine, which clearly indicates – sailors, you will neither in the Black Sea nor in the Black Sea have peace. the Caspian Sea!”

The inability of Russian air defenses to spot drones before they flew over the port was not lost on one influential Russian Telegram channel.

“There were reports that the enemy did not reach his objectives with his morning attack,” the Two Majors Telegram channel said. “However, we cannot bring ourselves to call the air defense system at the naval base effective. The enemy crashed his drone in the harbor not because his drone was new, super maneuverable or armored. No, it’s just that the bureaucracy and speed of decision-making do not allow even proactive officers (especially in the Navy) to make changes on their own.”

This is just the latest in Ukraine’s long-range attacks on Russian targets. Given the importance of the Caspian Sea to Moscow’s war effort, there are likely to be more.

Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com