Russian missile carrier damaged in Kerch unable to conduct combat duty

The damage to the Russian missile carrier located at the Zalyv shipyard in Kerch will not allow it to be deployed on combat duty.

Source: Natalia Humeniuk, spokeswoman for Operational Command Pivden (South), on air during the national joint 24/7 newscast; Ukrinform

Quote from Humeniuk: "As for the strike on the Kerch shipyard, the aftermath has not yet been fully verified, but we are talking about the fact that the strike was powerful, successful, and absolutely legitimate, since these are assets that ensure the enemy's combat capability. 

We do not yet have a full report on how badly the modern missile carrier is damaged, but based on the pictures we’ve seen, the damage is quite significant. 

This means that the carrier will definitely not come back to service any time soon."

Background:

• On 4 November, explosions occurred in Russian-occupied Crimea, and an air-raid warning was issued.
• Mykola Oleshchuk, the Commander of Ukraine's Air Force, later said that Ukrainian pilots had carried out airstrikes on the infrastructure of the Zalyv shipyard in the city of Kerch. At that time, there was no certainty whether the warship had been destroyed.
• It was only late on the evening of 4 November that the Russian Defence Ministry admitted that a warship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, docked at a shipyard in Kerch, had been "damaged".
• On the morning of 5 November, Oleshchuk confirmed that the Ukrainian forces had sunk one of the most modern ships of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, a Kalibr cruise missile carrier.
• On 5 November, Planet Labs published photos of a damaged Russian military vessel in Kerch.

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