Russians have put the Admiral Makarov frigate on combat duty in the Black Sea, which is equipped with up to eight Kalibr missiles, the Ukrainian military reported on Tuesday.
Defense Forces of Southern Ukraine said as cited by state news agency Ukrinform, “Despite a severe storm, the enemy brought the Admiral Makarov frigate to the Black Sea for combat duty. It is equipped with up to eight Kalibr missiles.”
This has raised Ukraine’s level of missile threat.
“Russia’s Black Sea Fleet’s (BSF) ability to use its Novorossiysk base to reload vessels with cruise missiles is likely to become a significant factor in the fleet’s operational effectiveness”, the British Ministry of Defense’s intelligence reported earlier this week.
“Traditionally, BSF has reloaded cruise missiles at Sevastopol in Crimea. With that facility increasingly held at risk by Ukrainian long-range strikes, Russia will highly likely see No-vorossiysk as the best alternative site”, it added.
However, the UK intelligence report stated that “relocating and reloading the missiles would re-quire new delivery, storage, handling and loading processes.”
The British ministry added, “On 13 November 2023, the Ukrainian military claimed that Russia has paused firing maritime cruise missiles because of ‘logistical problems’ at Novorossiysk. Russia will likely seek to expedite overcoming such issues in time for maritime cruise missiles to be included in any winter campaign of strikes against Ukraine.”
As for Novorossiysk, the Spokesperson for the Naval Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported earlier this month that Russians had to redeploy cruise missile carriers from Sevastopol to Novorossiysk. However, “the logistics serving these carriers had remained in Sevastopol.”
He said, “Now the enemy has faced the lack of logistics – they cannot load Kalibr missiles in No-vorossiysk. Accordingly, until they resolve this problem, they are actually unable to use missiles. In order to do so, they need to go to Sevastopol to recharge, but this is dangerous to them.”
Additionally, the Ukrainian official said that Russians were accumulating missile stocks before the winter period. “As the military and industrial complex cannot supply them with the desired amount of missiles, they have to hold such pauses.”
The Kalibr missile is a Russian cruise missile system engineered and produced by the Yekaterin-burg-based Novator Design Bureau (part of the Almaz-Antey defense manufacturer) and based on the S-10 Granat technology. It was used as the basis to create ground-based, airborne, surface, submerged, and export versions. Currently, various modifications of Kalibr missile systems are in service with the armed forces of Russia, India, and China, according to state news agency TASS.
