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Ukraine trolls Russia for losing an attack submarine to a country that hardly has a navy

Chris Panella   

Ukraine trolls Russia for losing an attack submarine to a country that hardly has a navy
  • A new video from Ukraine's defense ministry pokes fun at Russia for losing the Rostov-on-Don submarine.
  • The video trolls Russia for losing a submarine "in a land war" to a country "without many warships."

Ukraine is taking a victory lap after a devastating attack on a key Black Sea port last week, trolling Russia's apparent loss of an attack submarine in a new video.

The video, posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, by the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, pokes fun at Russia for having "lost a submarine in a land war."

"Wanna know why Ukraine will win the war?" the video reads. "Well, among other things... we're a country without many warships, and we just destroyed a Russian submarine." Ukraine's navy is limited in capability, and its flagship was actually scuttled shortly after the invasion to keep it from falling into the hands of the Russians.

Indeed, photos that surfaced online in the days after Ukraine's strike on Sevastopol appeared to show the Kilo-class submarine Rostov-on-Don wrecked, with severe and widespread damage to its exterior and possibly interior. An expert told Insider the pictures of the damage, particularly to the pressure hull, suggested the attack left the vessel beyond repair. A potential loss of critical repair facilities only further supported the assessment.

According to Oryx, which keeps a tally of Russian ships taken out by Ukraine, the Rostov is the first recorded submarine loss for Moscow in the war. And, according to warfare expert Franz-Stefan Gady, it's the first combat loss of a Russian submarine since 1945.

The Rostov-on-Don was one of the Black Sea Fleet's four improved Kilo-class submarines capable of carrying cruise missiles. They are formidable assets that have been responsible for striking Ukrainian targets and defending Russia's naval interests in the area.

It was wrecked in a pre-dawn attack on the Sevastopol shipyard by Ukraine last Wednesday, which included the use of cruise missiles — possibly Western-made Storm Shadow/SCALP-EG long-range cruise missiles — and drones.

Russia's Ministry of Defense said it destroyed the drones and shot down seven missiles, claims that are unverified, but a number of weapons made it through, causing extensive damage to the facility, the Rostov, and the landing ship Minsk, which Britain's defense ministry, citing open-source evidence, suggested had "almost certainly been functionally destroyed."

The hit on the Rostov is the latest in a string of high-profile attacks by Ukraine against Russian forces in occupied Crimea.

In August, Ukrainian officials said they'd modified a Neptune anti-ship missile, the weapon that killed the Russian Black Sea Fleet flagship cruiser Moskva last year, to strike and destroy an S-400 Triumf near Olekivka on the western side of the peninsula. Another S-400 — a prized mobile, surface-to-air system that's capable of shooting down cruise and ballistic missiles, as well as aircraft and drones, at high altitudes and long ranges — was apparently taken out earlier this month in Yevpatoriya, another western city in Crimea.

Unmanned surface vehicle attacks on warships and a key bridge in recent months have made the Black Sea a nightmare for Russian naval forces to navigate and defend. An expert previously told Insider these relatively cheap exploding drone boats — remote-controlled sleek, black watercraft around the size of a life boat — give Ukraine an asymmetric edge, causing massive damage to targets like the the Ropucha-class landing ship Olenegorsky Gornyak.

Ukraine's attacks, including a surprise amphibious raid in late August, on Crimea are both strategic and symbolic, as Kyiv hopes to ultimately make the peninsula "untenable" for Moscow's forces, a former US Army general previously told Insider, and sets up the contested peninsula as the most important area to reclaim in the larger war.



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