Black Sea Naval Base, Occupied Crimea Attacked By Drones, Russia Says, As ‘Cruel’ Fighting Under Way In East

Drone attacks on Russia’s largest naval base in the Black Sea and on illegally annexed Crimea were repelled overnight, but prompted a temporary halt of ship movement in one of Russia’s major commercial ports, the military and Moscow-installed authorities said on August 4.

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The Russian Defense Ministry said that two naval drones attacked the Novorossiysk Black Sea navy base overnight.

“Unmanned boats were visually detected and destroyed by fire from…Russian ships guarding the naval base,” the ministry said in a statement.

Previously, Telegram channels reported explosions and gunfire in the area.

The RIA Novosti news agency quoted Krasnodar regional Governor Veniamin Kondratyev as saying that no casualties or damage have been reported from the attack on Novorossiysk.

But the Caspian Pipeline Consortium that operates an oil terminal in Novorossiysk said the port authorities have temporarily halted all ship movement, although installations were not damaged and oil loading continued.

The Defense Ministry also said that it had shot down 13 drones over Crimea but that no damage or casualties were reported.

However, social media posts said that an oil depot in the port of Feodosyia caught fire and triggered some explosions.

Attacks in and around the Black Sea have increased since Russia refused to extend a Turkish- and UN-sponsored deal that allowed the shipping of Ukrainian grain by sea.

Russia earlier in the week attacked Izmayil, one of the two Danube ports used by Ukraine to export grain. Izmayil is located just 15 kilometers from the Romanian port of Tulcea.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said “very cruel” fighting was under way on the battlefields in the east.

“The occupiers are trying to stop our guys with all their might. The attacks are very cruel,” Zelenskiy said, adding that “it is hard everywhere. But whatever the enemy does, it is the Ukrainian force that dominates.”

The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on August 4 recorded about 40 battles at the front over the past day, with Ukrainian forces continuing their offensive in the south.

“The Defense Forces of Ukraine continue to conduct an offensive operation in the Melitopol and Berdyansk sectors [of Zaporizhzhya],” the military said.

In the Bakhmut sector of the eastern Donetsk region, Ukrainian forces are staving off the Russian military’s continued assaults, it said.

Serhiy Lysak, the governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, said early on August 4 that two civilians were wounded by intense Russian shelling overnight.

Meanwhile, Poland warned that a growing presence of mercenaries from Russia’s Wagner group in Belarus is aimed at destabilizing NATO’s eastern flank amid the ongoing Russian war in Ukraine.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, speaking after a meeting with Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda on August 3, said NATO allies must increase vigilance as the likelihood of provocations remains very high.

Morawiecki was speaking two days after two Belarusian military helicopters that were conducting training exercises near the border violated Poland’s airspace briefly.

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The Belarusian Defense Ministry denied that its helicopters violated Polish airspace, accusing Warsaw of “fabrications.”

“We need to be aware that the number of provocations will rise,” Morawiecki said at a news briefing with Nauseda. “The Wagner group is extremely dangerous and they are being moved to the eastern flank to destabilize it.”

Morawiecki and Nauseda met in the Polish border town of Suwalki, which sits on what is known as the Suwalki Corridor — the 80-kilometer-long stretch that is NATO’s only land connection with its Baltic members Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.

The Suwalki corridor separates Moscow’s exclave of Kaliningrad from Belarus and is seen as a potential target for Russia in order to isolate the Baltic states in case of a conflict with NATO.

With reporting by Reuters and AFP