Bulletins and News Discussion from March 4th to March 10th, 2024 - The Coalition of Losers - COTW: Pakistan

Here I am of course referring to the Ukrainian GUR's "Black Sea Attack Network," a NATO-advised effort to harass Russian Crimea and disrupt Russian control of the Black Sea, which has entirely replaced Ukraine's sunken or captured navy on the battlefield. This effort has several prongs: an aerial drone campaign, a sea drone campaign, a commando effort, and operations that could easily be categorized as pure terrorism such as the October 2022 VBIED attack on the Kerch Bridge. You will immediately notice that all of these lines of effort require very little in the way of infrastructure and logistics - you can build bombs and crude drones in a garage and guide them out of a living room. The BSAN sea drone program scored a number of successes and hair-raising near-misses over the course of 2023 and early 2024, most notably sinking the Tarantul-class missile boat Ivanovets with what was likely some loss of life on February 1st, 2024. At that point I suspect that the Russian Navy decided that something had to be done and, having carefully studied their foe, put a plan into action to destroy what was to them the most concerning part of the BSAN - the maritime drone program.

You see, you destroy an attack network not by attacking materiel but by attacking people. Any mechanic can put together a VBIED, but it takes real expertise to deliver that bomb exactly where it's needed for maximum effect. In the context of counterinsurgency this is straightforward, you figure out who these people are and go kick down their doors in the middle of the night. In a conventional war, where the attack network largely exists in a sanctuary far behind enemy lines, things are more difficult. But in a conventional war, that attack network can be expected to play by a few conventional rules, and that can be... exploited.

What follows is my theory.

The Russian Black Sea Fleet has added a number of ships over course of the war, and with mobilization and recruitment focused on the land services likely doesn't have many more sailors than it did two years ago. At the same time it had accumulated a handful of battle-damaged vessels that its leadership seems to have not seen fit to send back to the yard. Among them were the LST Cesar Kunikov (damaged during an ammunition handling accident widely but falsely reported as a Ukrainian missile strike in Berdyansk in March 2022) and the patrol corvette Sergey Kotov (reported damaged by a submersible drone attack in September 2023).

These ships would be used as stalking horses. The Cesar Kunikov was sent out first during a drone raid the Russians certainly knew was coming. Video of the engagement that subsequently emerged showed a minimal crew firing on attack drones with small arms, with the ship's formidable CIWS and cannon armament unused and perhaps nonfunctional. The ship was hit several times and foundered, with the crew evacuated safely and remaining Ukrainian drones in the area mopped up by rescue vessels. Russian intelligence would then have mapped out and confirmed the BSAN's structure via what were likely sloppy post-battle communications. That attack did not, however, cause the BSAN to drop its guard. Another stalking horse was deployed, the Sergey Kotov. Despite their somewhat limited military value, the Ukrainians have a particular hatred of Project 22160 patrol ships because a different one, the Vasily Bykov, was involved in the Russian capture of Snake Island at the start of the war. Deployed without support in the Kerch Strait during a large-scale (albeit unsuccessful) aerial drone raid, the Kotov attracted the attention of Ukrainian sea drones heading for another round with the Kerch Bridge. Video from the battle again suggests only a modest defensive effort with small arms, with subsequent reports that the ship was abandoned quickly (with few to no Russian casualties) and basically allowed to sink. It's noteworthy that the remaining drones were, again, easily mopped up by rescuers. And here, after this engagement, the Black Sea Attack Network was undone.

You see, congratulations were in order. Zelensky wanted to personally pin medals on the men who were destroying the hated Russian Black Sea Fleet. So, two days later, the personnel of the Black Sea Attack Network - the drone operators, the planners, the technicians, the officers, bosses and bosses' bosses, and likely a gaggle of foreign advisors - assembled in a hangar in Odessa to receive accolades from their nation's leader. Zelensky arrived (with the Greek Prime Minister in tow, apparently, perhaps sending a message to a significant maritime player), pinned medals on chests, shook hands, and departed. His motorcade was a block away when a Russian Iskander ballistic missile sliced through that hangar's roof and wiped out the assembled personnel of the Ukrainian sea drone network. It was probably launched the instant he walked out the door.

There were reports of a large number of NATO helicopters flying into Odessa in the strike's aftermath, and shrieking from the usual suspects that the Russians had "tried" to assassinate Zelensky, as though they couldn't kill him any time they wanted. Meanwhile, the Russian MoD put out a dry statement that they'd struck a target in Odessa associated with the Ukrainian drone campaign. It's noteworthy that in a Ukrainian "maximum effort" aerial drone attack conducted yesterday, timed to influence the Russian elections this week and in which they probably sent every drone they had available, there was no sea drone activity reported whatsoever. We shall have to see if this network is ever reconstituted and in what form.

There's a saying that one time is happenstance, two times is coincidence, and three times is planned - I believe it's quite possible another damaged LST from the same incident in 2022, the Novocherkassk, was also used as a stalking horse in a different operation given that its destruction on December 26th, 2023 was the last successful Storm Shadow attack in Crimea to date and occurred after a series of fairly dramatic strikes on Black Sea Fleet ships and facilities last fall and summer.