Up to 200 groups from Russia’s Rubicon drone unit now stand guard over tankers and cargo ships instead of flying at the front, according to Ukraine’s top drone commander.
Robert “Madyar” Brovdi, who leads Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, laid out the claim in a Facebook post on July 18. Rubicon is one of the most effective drone warfare units in the Russian army, and it is being partly pulled off the front line, he said. The result, in Brovdi’s account, is that every vessel in Russia’s “shadow fleet” gets its own assigned team of soldiers.
Rubicon is not the only formation involved. Brovdi said Russia has also sent personnel and equipment from the 51st Air Defense Division, along with troops from an anti-aircraft regiment of the Black Sea Fleet.
Operation “MoLoCHKa”
The reshuffling follows a Ukrainian operation that began on July 6 under the name “MoLoCHKa”. The acronym translates from Ukrainian as “Moscow will fall because of Crimea.” Its target is the shadow fleet, a group of mostly aging tankers sailing under foreign flags that Russia uses to carry oil around sanctions, embargoes and the G7 price cap.
Brovdi gave a tally for the first 13 days: Unmanned Systems Forces units hit 172 Russian vessels. The list covered tankers, dry cargo ships, ferries, floating cranes and tugs.
The latest day brought 13 more. Those were eight dry cargo ships, one oil tanker, one gas tanker, two floating cranes and one tugboat. The oil tanker was struck in the Sea of Azov. Every other vessel was hit in the Black Sea, Brovdi said.
Pressure on Crimea
Ukraine regularly strikes Russian military infrastructure far inside Russia and in occupied Ukrainian territory, aiming to wear down Moscow’s ability to keep fighting. This summer it added a campaign called the “logistical lockdown,” meant to disrupt military supply routes in occupied areas, Crimea among them. Russia has held the peninsula since 2014.
Mykhailo Fedorov, the former defense minister, spoke about the effect in a June 17 interview with Pressing. He said Ukrainian strikes could leave Crimea “fully isolated,” in practice turning it into “an island.”
“Crimea is being isolated with the help of drones,” Fedorov said. “And in the near future, it appears that Crimea will become an island. This could lead to very unexpected consequences for Russians.”
The figures on vessels hit and Russian units redeployed come from Brovdi, a Ukrainian commander, and were not independently confirmed in the account he gave.
