Twenty-one tankers burned in three days, and the man who ordered the strikes put out two dozen clips to prove it. Maj. Robert “Magyar” Brovdi, commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, said on Tuesday that his drone crews have now knocked out 300 ships from Russia’s “shadow fleet” in 11 weeks.
The footage, posted on his Telegram channel, appears to have been shot from drones speeding toward large vessels on open water. By Brovdi’s count, 166 of the ships were disabled in the Black Sea and another 134 in the Sea of Azov.
Operation MoLoChKa
The campaign began in early July. Its targets are the hundreds of merchant tankers assessed to be carrying sanctioned Russian oil and gas. Many of those vessels reach Russia through the Baltic, but Ukraine has concentrated on the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.
The effort is called Operation MoLoChKa, an acronym that translates as “Moscow will fall through Crimea.” Brovdi has been among the commanders pushing for mid- and long-range drones to lay a kind of siege on Crimea, the peninsula Russia annexed in 2014. Crimea is a key logistical hub for Russian forces on the southern front, and Ukrainian commanders liken it to a lynchpin of the whole war. Over recent months they have hit roads, bridges, energy facilities and transport vessels, trying to choke the peninsula with shortages.
His statement was blunt about results. “The Sea of Azov, along with the Kerch Strait, is closed and will remain so,” it said. “In the northern and northeastern Black Sea, it is ‘maybe we’ll slip through’ mode.”
A shift in tools
Earlier in the war, Kyiv leaned on surface and underwater drones against the Russian navy, which pushed the Black Sea Fleet back from Ukraine’s coast. Operation MoLoChKa runs on aerial drones. Progress in counter-jamming, artificial intelligence and flight technology now lets Ukraine hit Russia’s rear more consistently.
The ship strikes sit inside a wider long-range drone campaign against Russia’s oil and gas industries, meant to drain the Kremlin’s ability to pay for and supply the war. On Tuesday, Ukraine’s armed forces said they had knocked out 45% of Russia’s oil refining capacity.
