Russia no longer has a single missile carrier in Crimea

Russia no longer has a single missile carrier in Crimea / Photo: Defense Express

Missile carriers of the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Federation are no longer in occupied Crimea.

The last ship that the Russians kept in the occupied Crimea was the small missile ship «Askold», said the spokesman of the Naval Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Dmytro Pletenchuk in an interview with RBC-Ukraine.

This ship is project 22800 «Karakurt», which dates back to the 90s. The ships are new, but the project is old. The Russians were forced to return to this project after 2014, when Ukraine imposed sanctions and stopped supplying gas turbine engines for their frigates, he explained.

«They were forced to sell even a few already built hulls to India due to lack of engines. Instead, small missile ships could be equipped with a Russian engine from the Zvezda plant. Although they could make one such engine per year. And later they still switched to Chinese-made engines,» Dmytro Pletenchuk added.

The Russians returned to the Karakurt project to build five ships for the Black Sea Fleet. The first of them was «Zyklon». It was completed two years ago, but it has never been able to launch the Caliber cruise missile it was designed to carry.

«And recently it (Zyklon, — note) was simply destroyed. And I have the impression that the Russians put it there specifically so that someone would not go to prison for the way they built this Cyclone. He failed to pass state tests in two years,» said the spokesman.

There were also four more ships of this project: «Askold», which was destroyed by the Air Force in Kerch at the «Zaliv» plant. Two other ships were quickly transferred from Novorossiisk to the Caspian Sea — they have not yet been tested, another one is being built in Zelenodolsk (Tatarstan).

We will remind, the Naval Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine stated that the situation in the Black and Azov Seas remains stable, there are actually no combat units of the Russian Navy in the water area, but the Russians have increased air patrols.