Xavier Colas Moscow

Moscow

Updated Monday, March 11, 2024-20:27

  • War in Europe Two years after the Russian invasion of Ukraine: "We have become war junkies"

  • War in Ukraine Ukraine succeeds in the Black Sea by keeping out a superior Russian navy

Since the war began, Ukrainian forces

have destroyed

more than two dozen Russian ships

, including a military patrol boat last week.

It seems that the Ukrainians have also sunk a career: that of the head of the Navy, Admiral Nikolai Yevmenov, dismissed by the Kremlin

after a

long list of maritime disasters

that has made the Russians lose the initiative in the Black Sea, waters that They wanted to deny the Ukrainians.

So far Russia has lost 26 ships, or 25% of its total Black Sea fleet including the flagship, the cruiser

Moskva

.

The Russian navy has been heavily criticized during the war for failing to defeat the

noticeably smaller

Ukrainian navy .

If the dismissal of Admiral Nikolai Yevmenov is confirmed, it would be the biggest shake-up in Russia's top military leadership since Vladimir Putin's dismissal of aerospace force chief Sergei Surovikin last year.

Russian media, including the pro-Kremlin newspaper

Izvestia

, reported over the weekend that Admiral Yevmenov had been replaced by Northern Fleet commander Alexander Moiseyev.

The Kremlin did not want to comment on the news.

"

There are decrees classified as secret

, I cannot comment on them. There are no public decrees on this matter," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

Withdrawal to Novorossiysk

The Ukrainian ground offensive has failed to date.

But at sea the Russians have taken their share, losing against an enemy that does not have much to fight in the water.

Russia has been forced to move ships from the Sevastopol naval base in annexed Crimea to the port of Novorossiysk further east.

After Ukrainian drone and missile attacks destroyed several warships and submarines,

it has begun building a new base for its Black Sea fleet

in a pro-Russian separatist region of Georgia that is approximately 610 kilometers from Ukraine.

Instead, the Russians have seen their forces advance in recent months after more than a year of stagnant fighting.

Both

Izvestia

, a historic Moscow-based newspaper, and

Fontanka

, a St. Petersburg news website, cited anonymous sources confirming the change of command at the top of the Russian navy, based in St. Petersburg.

It has surprised no one that neither the Russian Ministry of Defense nor the Kremlin have made comments, as they usually wait for the official announcement.

But it is unusual that Russian military bloggers linked to the Kremlin have also not confirmed the news.

This week, Ukrainian intelligence services claimed that one of their drones

had hit and sunk a Russian patrol boat

, killing seven sailors.

In February, Russia's Defense Ministry fired the commander of the Black Sea Fleet for the third time since the start of the war.

Yevmenov, 61, had been head of the Navy since May 2019. The new commander in charge of the Navy, Admiral Moiseev,

has been commander of Russia's Northern Fleet

, based in the Arctic, since the year 2019. Previously served as head of the Black Sea Fleet since 2018.