A Russian serviceman provided Ukraine with details used to plan the devastating missile attack on Moscow’s Black Sea Fleet earlier this week, it has been claimed.
In exclusive comments to Kyiv Post, a spokesperson for The Partisan movement of Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars (ATESH), outlined some of the details of the operation.
“We managed to attract one of the military members of the Russian Black Sea Fleet,” they said.
“He got up-to-date information about the placement and probable combat missions of the Rostov-on-Don submarine.”
A series of explosions rocked the Sevastopol Shipyard in Russian-occupied Crimea in the early hours of Wednesday morning severely damaging the “Rostov-on-Don” submarine and the “Minsk” Large Landing Ship.
According to Russia’s defense ministry, the large attack involved ten cruise missiles and “three unmanned boats.”
On Wednesday morning in further exclusive comments to Kyiv Post, a source in Ukraine’s Military Intelligence Directorate (HUR) confirmed Kyiv had carried out the attack, describing it as a “very good result for Ukraine.”
The ATESH spokesperson told Kyiv Post that its partisans had been hunting for information for more than a week and were active in identifying important Russian military targets, but also received help from local citizens.
“Much of the information was received from ordinary residents of Sevastopol, who constantly send us information about Russian troops,” they said.
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They added that Russian forces in Crimea had “become victims of their own propaganda” as they “believed that all Crimeans fully supported Russia.”
Referring to the current mood among Russian forces in Crimea, they claimed the attack had been a wake-up call that now “reality terrifies them.”
“The constantly growing Ukrainian underground partisan movement demonstrates that the inhabitants of Crimea are ready to fight against Russia,” they added.
Ukrainian military behind-the-lines operations are highly secret and publicly released information about those activities is rarely given. Kyiv Post was unable to confirm all details of the ATESH report.
What can be categorically confirmed is the significance of the attack – and the multiple challenges it poses for the Kremlin.
The Ukrainian missile strikes have created a logistics and naval support crisis for Russian Black Sea Fleet (BSF) commanders that analysts suggest could last for up to a month.
Until the two congested dry docks are cleared and the third damaged dry dock is returned to working order, BSF command will have no choice but to shift any necessary repair work to the less capable and overloaded naval base in Novorossiysk, in Russia’s Kuban region.
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