(Reuters) – Ukraine hit a large Russian warship in Crimea with cruise missiles in an overnight attack that killed at least one person and could thwart any attempt by Russia to seize more Ukrainian territory along the Black Sea coast.
The Russian Defense Ministry, quoted by the Interfax news agency, said that Ukraine used missiles to attack the Crimean port of Theodosia and that the large landing ship Novocherkassk was damaged.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu informed President Vladimir Putin in detail about the attack, according to the Kremlin. Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, in a move that Kiev and the West condemned as an illegal annexation.
Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat said he thought it would be difficult for the Novocherkassk — which can carry tanks and armored vehicles and be used to land troops on the ground — to function again.
“We can see the force of the explosion, what the detonation was like. After that, it’s very difficult for a ship to survive, because it wasn’t a rocket, it was the detonation of ammunition,” he told Radio Free Europe.
Ukraine used cruise missiles in the attack, without specifying the type, Ihnat said. Both the UK and France supplied these missiles to Kiev.
Russia has signaled that it may try to seize more Ukrainian territory along the Black Sea coast. Putin said this month that Odessa, the headquarters of the Ukrainian Navy, was “a Russian city”.
Images posted to Russian news agencies on Telegram, supposedly from the port, showed powerful explosions and fires.
Unverified videos on social media, which allegedly captured the attack, showed a large explosion and balloon-shaped flames lighting up the night sky. An unverified daytime photograph, which, according to Ukrainian bloggers, showed the remains of the ship, showed a group of charred, elongated wrecks emerging from the water on a dock.