Ukraine claimed on Tuesday to have carried out an airstrike in Crimea that destroyed a Russian Navy tank landing ship in what would be, if confirmed, the third instance of major losses of Russian military hardware in less than a week. <\/p>\n
In a post on Telegram, Ukrainian Air Force commander Mykola Oleshchuk thanked personnel involved in \u201cthe destruction of the Novocherkassk large landing ship\u201d while it was in the port of Feodosia in Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula\u00a0illegally annexed by Russia in 2014. <\/p>\n
The Russian Defense Ministry said the Novocherkassk had been \u201cdamaged\u201d in a Ukrainian attack in a statement reported by the state-run TASS news agency. <\/p>\n
The Russia-appointed head of Crimea, Sergey Aksyonov, earlier acknowledged via a statement that there had been \u201can enemy attack in [the] Feodosia area,\u201d adding that \u201cdetonation has stopped and the fire has been localized.\u201d <\/p>\n
One person was killed and two injured in the Ukrainian strikes, Aksyonov said in an update on Telegram, though he did not mention the Novocherkassk. <\/p>\n
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky congratulated his military Tuesday for striking the Russian warship. <\/p>\n
\u201cI am grateful to our Air Force for the spectacular replenishment of the Russian Black Sea submarine fleet with another vessel. There will be no peaceful place for the occupiers in Ukraine,\u201d Zelensky said in a statement. <\/p>\n
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu \u201creported to [President Vladimir Putin] about the Ukrainian Armed Forces\u2019 attack on Feodosia and the damage to the large landing ship Novocherkassk,\u201d a statement released by the Kremlin said Tuesday. <\/p>\n
According to a US military fact sheet on the Novocherkassk and the other vessels in its Ropucha class, the 369-foot (112.5-meter) vessel displaces about 3,450 tons, making about the same size as a US Navy littoral combat ship. <\/p>\n
The Novocherkassk carries a crew of around 87 with capacity for 237 troops, according to the US military. It was not known how many personnel may have been aboard in the alleged Ukrainian attack. <\/p>\n
The ship is designed for beach landings with bow and stern doors and the ability to accommodate up to 25 armored personnel carriers on its vehicle deck. <\/p>\n
Oleshchuk, the Ukrainian commander, said the vessel had been carrying Iran-made Shahed attack drones. <\/p>\n
He said the Novocherkassk had \u201cfollowed\u201d the Moskva, the guided-missile cruiser that was the flagship of Russia\u2019s Black Sea Fleet before it sank in April 2022 after being struck by Ukrainian missiles. <\/p>\n
Ukraine also claimed in September that the Novocherkassk\u2019s sister ship, the Minsk, had been destroyed in an attack on the Sevastopol naval base in Crimea. <\/p>\n
The British Defense Ministry reported that an analysis of open-source intelligence found the Minsk was \u201calmost certainly functionally destroyed\u201d and the Russian submarine Rostov-on-Don also suffered catastrophic damage in that attack. <\/p>\n
If the destruction of the Novocherkassk is confirmed, it could be the third instance in the past week of the Russian military suffering losses of important hardware in combat, according to Ukrainian claims. <\/p>\n
On Christmas Eve, the Ukrainian Air Force said it destroyed an Su-24 fighter jet in the eastern Donetsk region and an Su-30SM fighter jet over the Black Sea. <\/p>\n
And on Friday, Zelensky said the country\u2019s forces had downed three\u00a0Russian\u00a0Su-34\u00a0warplanes. <\/p>\n
Ukrainian Air Force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat told Ukrainian media on Friday that\u00a0Su-34\u00a0jets \u201care one of the newest aircraft\u201d in service with the\u00a0Russian army and are used to carry out aerial bomb and missile strikes. <\/p>\n
According to Ihnat, each aircraft can cost \u201cat least $50 million.\u201d <\/p>\n
But they would be welcome successes for Ukraine after a period when the almost two-year-old war has not been going Kyiv\u2019s way. <\/p>\n
Walsh noted Ukraine was facing stepped up Russian attacks from the air and on the ground while international support for its war effort was flagging, including Zelensky\u2019s failure to convince the US Congress to continue funding military hardware past the end of the year while on a visit to Washington. <\/p>\n
Shoigu, in his final conference call of the year on Tuesday, declared what he claimed was the successful completion of the main objective for Russia\u2019s war effort in 2023, emphasizing what he considered the disruption of the Ukrainian counter-offensive. <\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian military has requested 500,000 additional troops, David Arakhamia, leader of the parliamentary majority said via Telegram on Monday. <\/p>\n
The government is drafting a bill on mobilization of troops to address the question of troop recruitment, he added. <\/p>\n\n
Ukraine claimed on Tuesday to have carried out an airstrike in Crimea that destroyed a Russian Navy tank landing ship in what would be, if confirmed, the third instance of major losses of Russian military hardware in less than a week. In a post on Telegram, Ukrainian Air Force commander Mykola Oleshchuk thanked personnel involved <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":13321,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-13320","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}