2024-04-22 21:21:26
And to call the 111-year-old ship successful would be an understatement, Forbes writes. But this success eventually has an end. On Sunday, the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine said that its forces hit the 96 long “Kommun” by a Ukrainian-made Neptun cruise missile while the ship was docked in Sevastopol, Russian-occupied Crimea.
The extent of the damage is unclear, but even moderate damage can put an old ship out of action for months or years. “Another bad day for the Russian Black Sea Fleet,” the Ukrainians quipped.
And it’s a particularly bad day for the Black Sea Fleet’s submarine fleet, to which Kommuna provides vital support.
Black Sea Fleet in 2022 joined Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine in February with about three dozen large warships, including the Kommun. In 26 months of intense fighting, the Russian navy has lost nearly a third of its pre-war fleet to Ukrainian missiles, cruise missiles, drones and sabotage.
Among the losses were a cruiser, a submarine, a supply ship, several patrol boats, two missile corvettes and at least six amphibious assault ships – not to mention one of the fleet’s rare Berijev Be-200 boats. However, the biggest damage can be done to the ship “Kommuna”.
The Kremlin cannot immediately replace any of the large ships lost to the Black Sea Fleet as a result of Ukraine’s actions — because ships that cannot navigate the shallow Volga and Don rivers to the Sea of Azov and the adjacent Black Sea have only one route to the Black Sea: the Bosphorus, connecting the Black Sea with the Mediterranean Sea. However, Turkey controls the Bosphorus and does not allow any foreign warships to pass through it during wartime.
The commune is irreplaceable in another sense, according to Forbes. It is a living time travel of the military fleet. A museum piece that, incredibly, is still in use when other ships of her age have already rusted away.
Losing “Kommun” – temporarily or permanently – the Black Sea Fleet also loses a vital capability. Kommuna is a two-hull catamaran: essentially a vessel with a large open space in the middle through which the crew can launch and raise miniature rescue submarines or raise objects such as parts of sunken ships from the seabed.
When in 2022 In April, a pair of Ukrainian missiles sank the Russian cruiser Moskva, Kommuna, in the western Black Sea, and its AS-28 mini-submarine reportedly helped retrieve parts of the wreckage and the bodies of the cruiser’s crew.
These rescue and recovery capabilities have given the Black Sea Fleet’s submarine force, which has four Kilo-class submarines left (after a Ukrainian missile blew up a fifth submarine in September in Sevastopol), the confidence to navigate increasingly hostile waters.
Yes, the Commune is a valuable historical artifact – but no, that doesn’t give it special status in a war zone. “Objectively, she is a legitimate target,” noted naval expert HI Sutton.
Without Komuna, the surviving submarines of the Black Sea Fleet will have to sail without support, and if one of the submarines were to have an accident and sink, they would not receive help from Komuna in the near future – if not ever.
2024-04-22 21:21:26