‘How Was Your Weekend?’ Ukraine Asks As Bombers Blow Up A Russian Ship

Russian warships aren’t safe anywhere near Ukraine. Not even at their piers and in their drydocks.

Maybe especially at their piers and in the drydocks.

On Saturday, Ukrainian air force Sukhoi Su-24 bombers launched at least three cruise missiles—British-made Storm Shadows or French-made SCALPs—at the Russian Black Sea Fleet missile corvette Askold, pierside in Kerch on the western edge of Russian-occupied Crimea.

Imagery released by the Ukrainian government strongly indicates the missiles badly damaged the 220-foot Askold, one of the newest warships in the increasingly battered Black Sea Fleet.

“Confirmed,” Kyiv’s strategic communications directorate stated. “The Russian missile carrier Askold—the newest ship of the Karakurt project with ‘stealth’ technology—was damaged.”

“How was your weekend?” the Ukrainian air force quipped in a social-media post that includes a photo of a SCALP missile.

Askold is just the most recent victim of Ukraine’s missile-armed bombers. A Ukrainian missile strike on the port of Sevastopol, in western Crimea, struck a submarine and a landing ship in their drydock on Sept. 13.

In 22 months of hard fighting with an enemy that has no major warships, the Black Sea Fleet has lost at least one cruiser, three amphibious ships, a submarine and a supply ship as well as several patrol boats and landing craft—and now Askold.

A dozen or so surviving missile frigates, corvettes and anti-submarine patrol boats possess the majority of the Black Sea Fleet’s remaining surface firepower. But these vessels must take extreme care to avoid attacks by Ukrainian missiles, rockets, unmanned aerial vehicles, robot boats and saboteurs.

Kyiv’s cruise missiles might be the most dangerous of these threats. The 2,900-pound, 155-mile-range missiles have tandem warheads that can blow up warships from the inside. Kerch is within range of Storm Shadows and SCALPs launched just inside Ukrainian lines in southern Ukraine.

When a low-flying SCALP or Storm Shadow—guided by a combination of GPS, terrain-matching and infrared imaging—strikes its target, a fuze in the nose first triggers a small shaped-charge warhead. That warhead blasts a hole in the outermost layer of earth, concrete or metal—clearing the way for the missile’s second warhead to plunge inside the target before exploding.

“This warhead design allows cruise missiles to achieve the degree of hard-target penetration formerly only possible using laser-guided gravity bombs,” explained Fabian Hoffmann, a University of Oslo proliferation researcher. “As such, Storm Shadow constitutes an incredibly effective weapon against hardened targets, if it can be brought to its target.”

It’s apparent Ukraine’s targeteers deliberately are seeking out Russian warships while they’re idle at their piers or in their drydocks. An unmoving warship obviously is much easier to hit than is a warship that’s underway and maneuvering.

Easier but not necessarily easy. If the Kremlin’s statements are reliable—and there are obvious reasons they might not be—the Ukrainians aimed 15 missiles at Kerch on Saturday, and local air-defenses shot down 13 of them.

It’s not for no reason that Ukrainian forces also have been targeting Russian air-defenses in and around Crimea, in particular the long-range S-400 surface-to-air missile batteries. Poking holes in the air-defense network usually is a prerequisite to a successful cruise-missile raid.

The scene over Kerch on Saturday was an apocalyptic one as the missiles streaked in. “Eyewitness videos show Ukrainian missiles targeted by Russian air defense in the sky, as well as smoke rising on the horizon,” the independent Conflict Intelligence Team noted. “The sound of flying missiles and multiple explosions can also be heard.”

One video depicts the missiles striking around and on Askold. A photo that the Ukrainian comms directorate circulated purports to depict the damage to the 800-ton corvette. “At minimum, severe damage to the port side, including the superstructure,” observed one analyst affiliated with CNA in Virginia.

Striking Askold is a big boon to Ukraine’s ongoing effort to control the western Black Sea and prevent the Russian fleet from interdicting the cargo ships hauling grain from Ukrainian ports.

It also is a relief to Ukrainian civilians. Askold is one of the Black Sea Fleet’s land-attack vessels. And it mostly has been firing its Kalibr cruise missiles at Ukrainian cities.

Every Kalibr-shooter the Ukrainians damage or destroy, at sea or in port, saves lives on land.