WAR IS ECOCIDE
Ukrainian Air Force Strikes Russian Vessel on Dnipro Estuary
On Monday, Ukraine's air force carried out a strike on a Russian-occupied merchant ship that has been grounded on the Dnipro Estuary for months. The Ukrainian military claims that the vessel has been in use as a listening post by Russian forces; Russia has not confirmed the attack.
The force of the blast appeared to send a lifeboat soaring skyward, and it tumbled back into the water off the starboard side.
The unnamed ship is located on a spit that extends from the north side of the Crimean Peninsula, an area held by Russia since 2014. Naval analyst H.I. Sutton dates the vessel's presence at the grounding site back to early June 2023.
The strike is the latest in a long and growing list of Ukrainian attacks on Russian vessels, from corvettes to landing ships to the occasional submarine, cruiser or tanker. According to UK intelligence, Ukrainian maritime strike capability has pushed the Russian Navy out of the western half of the Black Sea, ensuring the security of merchant traffic to and from the port of Odesa.
Over the weekend, Russian state media reported that the commander in chief of the Russian Navy has been removed and replaced with a new commander, Adm. Aleksandr Moiseev. At the regional level, the Black Sea Fleet has had three commanders in two years.
The Russian Navy's Commander-in-Chief Has Been Removed and Replaced
Russian state media has confirmed the dismissal of the Russian Navy's top officer, Adm. Nikolai Evmenov. He has been removed and replaced by the commander of the Northern Fleet, Adm. Aleksandr Moiseev.
Evmenov began his career in the Russian Navy's nuclear-submarine community, and he came up through the ranks in the Pacific Fleet's ballistic-missile submarine division. After a series of staff assignments, he took command of the Northern Fleet in 2016, and was appointed commander-in-chief of the Russian Navy in 2019.
Evmenov kept his role through the first two years of the invasion of Ukraine, despite a string of damaging losses in the Black Sea. Ukraine's navy lacks a fleet, but it has destroyed or damaged more than a dozen Russian warships using only long-range missiles and suicide drones. The Black Sea Fleet has gone through two commanding officers in this time period, Adm. Igor Osipov (dismissed August 2022) and Adm. Viktor Sokolov (dismissed February 2024).
He will be replaced by Admiral Aleksandr Moiseev. Like Evmenov, Moiseev is a submariner by background and has a background in the Northern Fleet. He also spent a year commanding the Black Sea Fleet from 2018-19; during this period, Ukraine accused him of involvement in the Kerch Strait Incident, a maritime skirmish between the 2014 seizure of Crimea and the full-scale invasion of 2022.
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