Ukrainian forces sank a Russian assault ship in the port of Berdyansk

In recent days, the Ukrainian armed forces have had some success, pushing back the Russian armies more than 30 km from Kyiv to the east of the city at the end of Bovary, while the Ukrainian forces have started a maneuver to try to encircle, or at least cut off the supply lines, of the Russian forces west of the city. Other Ukrainian counter-offensives in the north of the country, but also in the south around the town of Mykolaiev, also obtained certain results, without however being decisive. But today, Ukraine has succeeded in an attack which, by its audacity but also its symbolic dimension and its operational consequences, will deeply mark this war. Indeed, at 7:45 a.m. this morning, a Ukrainian Tochka-U ballistic missile struck the port of Berdyansk, sinking one of the Russian Navy's largest vessels positioned in the Black Sea, the nearly 5000-strong assault ship Orsk tons of the Alligator class, and damaging two other 4.000 ton tank transports of the Ropoucha class, forcing the two surviving vessels to leave the port.

With the exception of Slava-class Moskva cruiser, the two Landing Ship Tank, or Saratov class tank landing ship, also designated Project 1171 Alligator, are the two most imposing buildings of this fleet, and if they entered service at the end of the Sixties, they continue to represent important tools for Russian naval power in the region, notably by ensuring important logistical support missions. This is precisely why the Orsk, like the LSTs Caesar Kunikov and Novocherkassk, had reached the port of Berdyansk in the Sea of ​​Azov recently captured by Russian forces on their way to Mariupol, the Russian authorities having even taken the liberty of publishing photos on social networks to show the arrival of these ships, and the unloading operations, without imagining that the Ukrainian forces could target them with a ballistic missile.

It is true that the Ukrainians have probably, with this strike, benefited from an exceptional alignment of the planets. Indeed, the Toshka-U ballistic missile that would have been used has a range of 180 km, while the strip of land controlled by Russian forces in the south of the country along the coast of the Sea of ​​Azov, already extend over several tens of kilometres, and that the area between the Russian forces that led the offensive as far as Zaporizhia to the west, and the area controlled by the armies of Donetsk to the east, is the faith relatively narrow and, one would have thought, particularly watched by the Russian air means. Not only did the Ukrainian forces manage to position their Erector Launcher Carrier or TEL of the Tochka-U missile within range of Berdyansk undetected, but the missile itself had remarkable accuracy in successfully sinking the Orsk and to damage Caesar Kunikov and Novocherkassk in a single strike, knowing that the missile only carries a warhead of 120 kg, and that its accuracy is only 90 meters.

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