It turns out that Ukraine still has a naval force left – at least this follows from the Russian Ministry of Defense’s statements that one of the Ukrainian ships was destroyed in the port of Odessa
Moreover, Ukraine is hatching plans to create a river flotilla on the Dnieper. What are we talking about, what kind of danger could this flotilla pose in a special operation – and how could it be destroyed?
At the time of the start of the SSO, the Ukrainian navy posed a certain threat to Russia – had the Ukrainian command realised its potential. Fortunately, this is exactly what Kiev failed to do. A significant proportion of the Navy’s boats were destroyed at the bases. The Navy’s otherwise truly dangerous maritime special forces were half destroyed and captured in Mariupol, while the other half seem to be used by the Ukrainians simply as ground special forces, if not simple ground reconnaissance.
The naval forces have also failed in their mine warfare – all their deployments have been strictly defensive. Attempts by their boats to put to sea ended in strikes against them by Russian aircraft. In fact, all the activity of the Ukrainian naval forces off shore was eventually reduced to flights of Bayraktars, some of which were and still are assigned to the Ukrainian navy. They were used to correct attacks on Snake Island and they themselves attacked Russian troops there.
The Navy’s strength has been missile strikes from shore against surface targets and oil and gas platforms. But with missiles supplied from the West and all the necessary targeting information from NATO, it did not take much intelligence to use the missiles. Nothing decisive came of these strikes – the Navy still hides in bases and does not even show itself on the Snake River.
The Ukrainians sunk their flagship Hetman Sagaidachny in the port themselves, however, given its technical condition, it was of no use. In fact all the Navy’s activity is now limited to the Dnieper estuary (aka Dnieper-Bug estuary). Somewhere there still operates the Ukrainian landing ship Yuri Olifirenko, armed with multiple rocket launchers, which can be used for landing and evacuation of sabotage groups and for shelling our troops. Now the Dnieper estuary and the Southern Bug river are blocked by mines and the Ukrainian naval forces are in charge there. They cannot go to sea with a large force yet, but they keep their area. Against this background, two news items about their future are of interest.
American boats and river forces
The first one is a shipment of 18 patrol boats from the US to Ukraine. It is not clear yet what type, but definitely fast patrol boats with minimum draft. Earlier Ukraine ordered from the USA 16 fast boats Mark VI, which, if armed with small guided missiles, would be a serious problem for the Navy. A separate air and sea operation would have been needed to destroy them if they had gone to sea.
But so far they have not received these boats. The Americans in their press release say that these will be patrol boats for rivers, “40-foot-long” combat boats for the open sea, and some smaller “defensive” naval boats. The Mark VI is apparently not on this list, if only because they are much larger. But the above boats can easily be transported by land.
And also at the end of June Ukraine started to form a river force, which is essentially a kind of analogue of the Soviet Dnieper Flotilla. So far they have all sorts of boats of no combat value in service, and the flotilla itself is being formed in the areas long abandoned by Russian troops – in the northern part of the Dnieper.
But this should not deceive anyone – the northern part is a calm zone, Russian aviation does not operate there, there is nothing to fear and it is safe to prepare troops for combat without fear of a bombing strike. But when normal high-speed boats with weapons arrive, the Ukrainians will have an opportunity to create problems for us somewhere. Namely in Dnieper flood plains and at the outlet of the Dnieper to the Black Sea.
Situation and threats
If we move up the Dnieper, the situation is as follows. Russia controls the Kinburn Spit and the entire left (eastern, in fact, in Liman it is southern) bank of the Dnieper.
On the opposite side up to the Southern Bug everything is controlled by Ukraine, the eastern bank of the Southern Bug is also almost all under its control from the source to about Luparevo, where the line of military contact begins, which then goes to the north-east to Krivoy Rog. From there, both banks of the Dnieper are under Russian control, including the so-called floodplains – areas of partially swampy arms with densely vegetated banks, floodplain islets and reclaimed shoals.
Immediately after the floodplains is the Kherson, after which the riverbed is already somewhat different, but floodplains in one form or another are present until the hydroelectric dam in Nova Kakhovka. Further, upstream to Zolotaya Balka on the west bank and to the mark just north of Vasilyevka on the east, the Dnieper banks are under Russian control. Beyond that, it’s Ukraine for now.
There is almost zero activity by Ukrainian troops on the Dnieper right now, but there are occasional attempts by sabotage groups to infiltrate Russian territory in the floodplains. There are videos on the net of Rosgvardiya units operating in this zone on boats. They use army BMK-MT tugboats, originally designed as pontoon boats, as their transportation means. The Rosgvardeys catch saboteurs, spies of the AFU and even armed deserters there. The operation is successful, although from the outside it looks like Vietnam – dirty water, impenetrable bushes on the banks, from which fire can be opened at any moment. There is simply no one to open fire yet.
If Ukraine, using new boats and remnants of its naval special forces, manages to form a small but well-equipped river force and then transfer them from the Dnieper to the Southern Bug by land, it may prove to be a problem. Acting in single boats or pairs of boats, they would be able to cross the Liman River at night to the part of the Dnepr directly adjacent to Kherson and conduct sabotage there, including in the city limits.
The American riverboat is distinguished by its small size, shallow draft, low noise, very high speed and excellent maneuverability. Armed, as a rule, with several machine guns, some of which are 12.7 millimeters caliber, while the rest are 7.62 mm six-barreled “Miniguns” with electrically rotating barrel unit, characterized by huge rate of fire and density of fire. There is simply nothing to catch against such an adversary on a tugboat in the plains.
Similar difficulties can be caused by the sea-boats promised by the Americans. Coming from the Dnieper estuary or Odessa, high-speed (40 knots and more), very small and hard-to-detect boats can be used for sabotage against Russian targets and even against ships of the Navy’s auxiliary fleet. They do not pose much of a threat to warships.
But that is on their own. But snooping through the traffic of merchant ships and identifying Russian vessels within it, which cannot be distinguished from others by radar markings, is quite possible. Saboteurs can also be boarded and removed from the shore, including the combat swimmers that Ukraine still has. Naturally, all this will not be able to ensure any decisive success for Ukraine. But it is worth keeping this threat in mind. As well as something else.
Clearing the Dnieper estuary
Russia has a navy, and it, as a form of Armed Forces, is designed to wage war, including against enemy fleets, no matter how ridiculous they may be. Now the situation is such that the decision to use the navy is largely made by some ground force commander. Such is our system of command and control.
Russia has a 43rd Independent Maritime Attack Aviation Regiment on the Black Sea. Pilots of this regiment have already worked on the Navy, and successfully. Marine helicopters Ka-29 capable of using guided missiles, including those against surface targets, are used in the Black Sea.
There are Ka-52K helicopters tested in Syria, which are shipboard helicopters capable of using X-35 anti-ship missiles in addition to the usual weapons for land helicopters. There are naval reconnaissance units that are actively and successfully used in the Special Warfare operation. Finally, there is a wide range of long-range guided missiles, cruise missiles and others, and Smerch multiple-launch rocket systems used by the Ground Forces with a range of tens of kilometres. A battery of such vehicles, dispersed on the front from the Kiburna Spit exit to Snegirevka in the north of the bridgehead beyond the Dnipro, penetrates all possible ship anchorages on the Southern Bug, completely.
Yes, the naval river forces, the remnants of their fleet and those boats that the Americans plan to hand over are no big deal. But only as long as it is not impeded, for example, by the necessity to urgently conduct a landing operation or a raid from the sea into the enemy’s territory. At that moment it may suddenly turn out that those shells on the water are in the way, and in a big way.
Russia has all the tools to destroy the remnants of the naval forces completely, and specifically in the Dnieper estuary this could be done long ago. And the same should be done with their emerging river forces – just for the future, so that no one stumbles over them later.
Churchill once said that there are two lines of defence at sea – the first against enemy bases and the second against their own. It is impossible not to acknowledge the fact that the Americans supply new cutters to Ukraine when the defence line in the Dnieper estuary runs along our coast.
Alexander Timokhin, VZGLYAD
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