Ukrainian claims cruise missile attack on Crimean port destroyed Russian warship

Ukraine struck a large Russian landing warship in Crimea with cruise missiles in an overnight attack that killed at least one person and could hinder any Russian attempt to seize more Ukrainian territory along the Black Sea coast.

The Russian defence ministry, cited by the Interfax news agency, said Ukraine had used air-launched missiles to attack the Crimean port of Feodosia and that the Novocherkassk large landing ship had been damaged.

Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu had briefed president Vladimir Putin in detail about the attack, the Kremlin said. Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 in a move Kyiv and the West condemned as an illegal seizure.

Ukrainian air force spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat said he thought it would be hard for the Novocherkassk – which can carry tanks and armoured vehicles and be used to land troops ashore – to re-enter service.

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Ukraine had used cruise missiles in the attack, without specifying what kind, Mr Ihnat said. Both Britain and France have supplied Kyiv with such missiles.

Russia has hinted it may try to seize more Ukrainian territory along the Black Sea coast. Mr Putin earlier this month said Odessa, the headquarters of Ukraine’s own navy, was “a Russian city”.

Footage posted on Russian news outlets on Telegram, purportedly from the port, showed powerful explosions detonating and fires burning.

Sergei Aksyonov, the Russian-installed governor of Crimea, said on Telegram that one person had been killed. The RIA news agency said four people had been injured.

Ukraine’s armed forces chief has expressed frustration with the performance of military draft offices, in remarks suggesting they should mobilise more troops for the war.

Gen Valery Zaluzhnyi spoke at his first wartime news conference a day after Ukraine’s parliament published the text of a draft law containing reforms to the army draft programme, including lowering the age of men who can be mobilised to 25 from 27.

The Bill’s publication sparked controversy on social media, which appeared to prompt the typically publicity-shy general to make a rare effort to speak to the press.

“I am not currently satisfied with the work of the [draft offices],” he said.

“If I was satisfied with their work, we would not be here discussing this draft law [on mobilisation].”

Ukraine saw tens of thousands of men volunteer to fight in the first months of Russia’s invasion, but that enthusiasm has dampened 22 months into the full-scale war.

Gen Zaluzhnyi also conceded that Ukrainian troops had withdrawn to the edges of Maryinka, a town fought over for months which the general now said “no longer existed” due to the destruction wreaked upon it.

The reforms are highly sensitive for a weary population in the midst of a nearly two-year-old war which has no end in sight. Last week, Mr Zelenskiy said the military had proposed mobilising an additional 450,000-500,000 people into the army.

Gen Zaluzhnyi acknowledged that figure, although he said it had not come from the military. He said such a figure represented an overall plan and would be filled gradually.

He told reporters in Kyiv that he would never have revealed such a number publicly, a remark that may renew public speculation of political friction between him and Ukraine’s wartime president.

Gen Zaluzhnyi oversaw the 2023 counteroffensive that failed to retake significant quantities of Russian-occupied land.

However, he is still extremely popular with many Ukrainians after beating back Russian forces from Ukraine’s capital in early 2022 and masterminding two successful counter-offensives that autumn, which retook large amounts of territory.

Tensions between Gen Zaluzhnyi and Mr Zelenskiy burst into the open in November after the general was quoted as saying the war was heading towards a stalemate because of the technological state of play on the battlefield, a comment that drew a rebuke from the president’s office. – Reuters

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