Novorossiysk base protection, Ukrainian capabilities in focus after attack on submarine

Video of the attack released by Ukraine's Security Service on 15 December shows the open entrance to Russia's Black Sea Fleet base in Novorossiysk. (SBU)

Security measures around the Russian Black Sea Fleet base within the port of Novorossiysk, and Ukrainian technology and tactics, have come into focus following the attack on a Russian Kilo II submarine, revealed on 15 December.

The SBU said the attack, which Russia's Ministry of Defence acknowledged and which appeared to damage the Russian Navy Kilo II-class (Project 636.3 Varshavyanka) conventionally powered submarine (SSK), was a joint operation between its 13th Main Directorate of Military Counterintelligence and the Ukrainian Navy.

Dmytro Pletenchuk, spokesperson for the Ukrainian Navy, said in a Ukrainian news interview on 16 December that “These [Kilo II] submarines were built, as a rule, in Leningrad [St Petersburg]. By the way, there are now two units of the same type 636 from the Black Sea Fleet, which have not been able to return to the Black Sea waters [from St Petersburg] since the start of the full-scale invasion through the closed Bosphorus [strait] due to the Montreux Convention. There were four of them left. One of them was Rostov-on-Don . You remember, it was the first submarine that a country lost after World War II [in August 2024]. And this is the second boat. And now there are two such submarines left and one submarine that is not a carrier of cruise missiles.”