Six Russian warships designed for amphibious landing operations are en route to the Ukrainian coast.

After the first three ships from Kaliningrad entered the Black Sea on Tuesday evening, the other three ships belonging to the Northern Fleet entered the Dardanelles on Wednesday morning.

They, too, are expected to complete the transit to the Black Sea later in the day.

"This doubles the Russian landing ship capability in the Black Sea," a senior Western intelligence official told the FAZ

Thomas Gutschker

Political correspondent for the European Union, NATO and the Benelux countries based in Brussels.

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NATO countries have been keeping a close eye on the ships since they entered the North Sea from the Baltic Sea on January 18.

The Russian Ministry of Defense did not provide any information about their destination.

The intelligence official said the ships would first call at the Sevastopol naval base on Russia's annexed Crimea peninsula.

"Then you will most likely start an exercise." This could develop into a real landing operation.

"The main concern is that they will use the mobility and landing capability to use the marines to capture the land corridor between Crimea and Moldova and isolate Odessa," the intelligence official said, speaking on condition that he not be identified further will.

Ships probably fully loaded

In such a scenario, Ukraine would lose its access to the Black Sea and, in Odessa, its main naval and commercial port.

Russia, in turn, would link occupied Crimea to the de facto independent Moldovan republic of Transnistria, controlled by a pro-Russian regime.

1,500 Russian soldiers are already stationed there.

The DropShips are five Ropucha-class (Project 775) ships commissioned between 1985 and 1991.

One of the ships was captured during the occupation of Crimea in 2014.

They can each carry ten main battle tanks and 340 marines and land directly on the coast.

The sixth ship is the "Pyotr Morgunov", one of the two already commissioned landing ships from the modern Ivan Gren class (project 11711).

It can transport 13 main battle tanks or up to 40 lightly armored vehicles, two heavy attack helicopters and 300 infantrymen.

According to the intelligence officer, they are "probably" fully loaded;

her depth speaks for it.

That would correspond to a total of two tactical battalion combat groups.

However, the ships could also take on infantrymen and weapons only in Sevastopol.

The ships, which are accompanied by a Kilo-class submarine, called at the Russian naval base in Tartus on the Libyan coast at the weekend to refuel.

The Russian Ministry of Defense said only that they were "participating in exercises led by the Navy".

According to experts, Russia has not had as many landing ships in the Black Sea since the end of the Cold War as it does now.