On March 5, 2024, the Military Intelligence of Ukraine (MIU) said they attacked and sank the Russian Bykov-class patrol vessel Sergey Kotov near the Kerch Strait in the Eastern Black Sea.

The GUR stated that "Magura V5" marine drones were used for the attack on "Sergei Kotov".

The same type of drones were used in the attack on the Russian amphibious assault ship "Caesar Kunikov" in February 2024. This information was released in the daily intelligence report of the British Ministry of Defense, a summary of which was published on the social media X, known until recently as Twitter. .

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The Sergei Kotov ship was commissioned into the Black Sea Fleet only in July 2022. It was already targeted by the Ukrainian Navy in July and September 2023, sustaining minor damage.

After a short repair, it returned to service on both occasions.

This is the third ship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet sunk in the last five weeks.

Probably because of the losses of the Black Sea Fleet, on February 15, 2024, the commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Admiral Viktor Sokolov, was dismissed.

Ukraine continues to restrict the freedom of maneuver of the Russian fleet in the Black Sea.

The Russian patrol ship "Sergei Kotov" has sunk off Crimea

The Center for Strategic Communications of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (StratCom) reported that as of early February 2024, Ukrainian forces had disabled about 33 percent of Russia's warships, including 24 ships and one submarine.

Russian military bloggers reacted to the sinking of the Sergei Kotov by criticizing the Russian military command's lack of response to the incident and a broader critique of the bureaucratic inertia of the Russian military apparatus.

Russian military bloggers highlighted the fact that this was the fourth Ukrainian attack on the Sergey Kotov since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Russia, and that the crew had successfully repelled similar Ukrainian attacks in July, August and September 2023.

A prominent Kremlin-linked military blogger noted that the Sergey Kotov was not adequately equipped to defend itself against such an attack, and many military bloggers questioned why the ship did not have defense systems against maritime drones, he notes that the crew has experienced similar attacks before.

One of the famous military bloggers stated in a post published on March 5 (which has been viewed 1.7 million times as of this writing) that the Russian military command did not react to the sinking of the "Sergei Kotov" because nobody likes to tells the truth to the military command and that the military command refuses to learn important lessons from past experience to improve the military.

Another blogger emphasizes that it would be very important for the Russian command to listen to the crew of the "Sergei Kotov" in order to improve and modernize warships and defense procedures in the future.

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