Ukraine may have shot another Russian warship with an MP saying one of Putin’s state-of-the-art frigates is ‘in trouble’ in the Black Sea.
Oleksiy Goncharenko, head of the council of Odesa which houses Ukraine’s largest naval base, identified the vessel on his Telegram channel as the Admiral Makarov.
He said the vessel ran into difficulties overnight, before reposting a report from a local news outlet suggesting it had been shot with a Ukrainian missile near Snake Island – whose defenders memorably told another warship to ‘go f*** yourself’ .
Unconfirmed reports suggest rescue vessels and aircraft have set off from Russia’s largest Black Sea port of Sevastopol towards the site, while flight tracking data shows an American drone is circling nearby.
If confirmed, it would be another hugely embarrassing loss for Russia after Ukraine managed to sink the Moskva – the flagship of Putin’s Black Sea fleet – along with hundreds of her crew.
Goncharenko wrote: ‘The patrol frigate of the Russian Navy “Admiral Makarov” is despondent. The God of the seas takes revenge on the offenders of Ukraine.
‘The frigate Admiral Makarov was laid down in February 2012 at the Yantar shipyard in Kaliningrad and launched in September 2015.
‘And in 2022, when he took part in the murder of Ukrainians, he was struck by the God of the Seas. He hasn’t set off after Moskva yet, but the trouble has begun.’
Around half an hour later, he posted an article from local news outlet Dumskaya which said: ‘According to preliminary information, the frigate was unable to dodge the Ukrainian Neptune anti-ship missile .
‘The ship is badly damaged, but remains afloat . For now.’
The Makarov is an Admiral Grigorovich-class frigate, one of the Russian navy’s newest vessels and the most state-of-the-art frigate operating in the Black Sea.
Costing around $500million each, the warships are equipped with eight cruise missile launchers and have almost certainly been involved in attacks on cities in western Ukraine during the conflict.
They also carry a 100mm naval gun, two dozen anti-aircraft missiles, anti-ship torpedoes and close-in weapons systems designed to blow up incoming missiles.
This is a breaking news story. More to follow…