Dissecting the September 2023 Sevastopol Dry Dock Strike
On October 24, 2023, Ukrainian president Volodymr Zelensky announced that the Russian Navy is no longer capable of operating in the western part of the Black Sea, and that Russian forces in the region are being pushed to flee occupied Crimea.
This is a bold statement, albeit one rooted in tangible events that took place on the ground in the preceding weeks, including the destruction of numerous targets with significant strategic value to the Russian military.
This visually focused guide aims to shed light on one such event: the September 13, 2023 attacks on the Sergo Ordzhonikidze Marine Repair Plant (S. Ordzhonikidze plant) in occupied Sevastopol, Ukraine.
In the early morning hours on September 13, 2023, occupied Sevastopol city awoke to loud explosions reverberating through the air. In the following moments, footage of a bright mushroom-shaped cloud rising above the center of the city trickled out onto social media. The city center of Sevastopol hosts various naval facilities of importance to the Russian Black Sea fleet, and most of those facilities are in hard-to-reach bays located inland and protected from attacks on the open sea. This desirable geographic advantage is one of the reasons the Soviets built their Black Sea fleet bases in Crimea, and one of the reasons Russia sought to annex and occupy the Crimean peninsula in 2014.
Russia’s all-out war on Ukraine has strained its domestic logistics, maintenance, and production capacity, putting pressure on various supply chain segments, including repair facilities and ammo storage sites. As a result, Russian forces find themselves lacking in the sort of overwhelming firepower typically needed to secure major forward advancement.
One facility critical to Russian Black Sea fleet maintenance and repair is the S. Ordzhonikidze plant. Originally built in 1783 when Sevastopol city was originally established, the plant is meant to build and repair ships, and today hosts two of Russia’s three dry dock facilities across the entire Black Sea.
This makes the S. Ordzhonikidze plant a high-value target for long range strikes, especially when ships are actively dry-docked at the facility. This potential was finally realized on September 13, 2023, when Ukraine hit the dry docks with one of its newest long range standoff munitions: the Storm Shadow (known in French as the SCALP-EG), a jointly British-French produced cruise missile with standoff potential of at least 250km (155mi).
Occupied Crimea was one of the primary staging locations for Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The Russian Black Sea fleet operates various ships and submarines capable of launching long-range cruise missiles These cruise missiles are one of the main culprits for deep strikes on the Ukrainian infrastructure grid and for terror strikes on the civilian population at large. To maintain its constant barrage of cruise missile strikes, Russia needs a large infrastructure network for repair, maintenance and logistics. The S. Ordzhonikidze ship repair plant is one such crucial facility.
Following the initial strikes, more and more footage began surfacing online showing the attack. The precise nature of the strike slowly started becoming apparent: a photograph from the other side of the bay showed a serious fire and likely structural damage to the ships stationed inside the dry docks. Eventually, a close-up image was leaked showing a concerned man standing in front of a large blaze that dramatically illuminated the scene, suggesting that firefighting crews were actively working on putting out a substantial fire at the S. Ordzhonikidze ship repair plant dry docks. The scene also showed that a Ropucha-class Pr.775 landing ship was on fire and had suffered significant damage from the strike.
In the following hours, two vessels were confirmed to have been at the dry dock at the time of the strike. A Pr.636.3 Improved-KILO modernized submarine, the “Rostov-na-Donu”, and the Ropucha-class landing ship, the “Minsk”.
To understand what losing these ships means for Russia, a closer look at each individual ship is needed.
Originally built in Poland for the Soviet Navy, the Pr.775 Ropucha is a specialized beach landing vessel. Capable of landing a cargo capacity of up to 500 tons, this cargo can consist of 10 main battle tanks and 340 infantry, or 12 BTRs and 340 infantry units, or any other other military loadout of infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs), trucks, armored vehicles, or other ordnance and equipment.
Since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, it has resorted to using its Ropucha-class ships as transport and logistics vessels, instead of in the specialized role they were designed for: beach landings. With almost no beach landing assaults conducted by Russia, the Ropucha has rarely conducted the operations it was originally designed for. One notable exception was a landing operation during the early stage of the war near Berdyansk, with an original objective to conduct a beach landing in Odesa, but the assault failed due to heavy Ukrainian resistance.
Since Russia doesn’t have access to the facilities that originally built the Ropuchas, and does not have the domestic production capacity to replace the manufacturing facilities, Russia is incapable of replacing these ships despite the important role the Ropuchas play in its war effort. This is why Ukraine has targeted Ropucha-class ships several times, prioritizing the targeting and destruction of these ships despite the limited resources available to do so. The “Minsk” would become this war’s third visually confirmed Ropucha-class ship that Russia will be incapable of restoring for the foreseeable future.
March 24, 2022 – 1 Landing Ship Destroyed, and 2 Others Damaged by Ukrainian Tochka-U Missiles with Cluster Warheads
August 4, 2023 – Ropucha Allegedly Damaged by an Unmanned Naval Vessel
September 13, 2023 -The “Minsk” Destroyed by Storm Shadow Missiles
The second destroyed vessel was a modernized Kilo-class submarine, later identified as the “Rostov-na-Donu” B.237. The Kilo is a diesel powered submarine initially designed in the 1970s, and later significantly upgraded under the name Pr.636.3 Kilo-II. It is considered highly stealthy, and like many submarines, is characteristically difficult to detect at open sea, and especially when underwater. The upgraded Kilo-II included new across-the-board enhancements like sensors and other electronic components. One of the most important upgrades equipped to some new Kilos was the ability to launch Kalibr-class cruise missiles from the submarine’s torpedo bays.
The “Rostov-na-Donu” was one such upgraded Kilo-II, with the ability to launch Kalibrs, making it an especially valuable target. Not only could it fire the cruise missiles, but it could launch them from relative safety while stationed out at sea and hiding under the waves. With Ukraine possessing no realistic means to monitor and hit such a target, the only way to strike a Kilo would be while the submarine is stationed out on land, like at a dry dock facility.
The “Rostov-na-Donu” B.237 stationed at the S. Ordzhonikidze ship repair plant would become the first submarine since World War II to be lost to combat. It would also become the first submarine in history to be destroyed with the use of a long-range cruise missile.
During the night of the attack, Russian air defense potentially intercepted several targets over occupied Crimea, including what Russia claimed was an S-200 missile that Ukraine modified for ground attack roles. However, it was clear that Russian air defense didn’t intercept all of the incoming projectiles, and at least a couple made it through and hit their targets with very high precision. Ukraine has few weapons capable of striking at such a long range, and many experts speculated that it was the British/French-provided Storm Shadow/SCALP-EG cruise missile that hit the “Rostov-na-Donu” and the “Minsk”.
Ukrainian officials later confirmed that the hit on the S. Ordzhonikidze ship repair plant was indeed conducted with Storm Shadow/SCALP-EG cruise missiles, explaining the impressive accuracy of the attack which allowed for hitting and severely damaging three targets – the Ropucha landing class vessel, the modernized Kilo-class submarine, and a dry dock capable of holding two large ships – seemingly using only two cruise missiles.
Although the ships alone comprise high-value targets for destruction, the damage to the dry dock is arguably the greater victory for Ukraine. Losing two out of three dry dock points in the Black Sea will further strain the already stressed logistical operations of the Russian Black Sea fleet and hinder or delay its operations.
The means by which Ukraine was able to use advanced NATO cruise missiles is also worth noting, having combined a dated Soviet tactical bomber like the SU-24 with modern NATO munitions like the Storm Shadow cruise missile.
The SU-24 is a relatively outdated Soviet supersonic tactical bomber introduced in 1974. This aircraft was impressive at the time of its conception, and with life extension programs and various upgrades the aircraft has remained in service with both Ukrainian and Russian air forces to the present day. Despite the aging of these airframes design, Ukraine and its allies were able to mount and operate long range precision cruise missiles of NATO standard designed in the late 1990s.
The Storm Shadow/SCALP-EG is a joint British/French project. Designed to be a long range standoff weapon that can hit strategically high-value targets at medium to long ranges, it is equipped with an array of sensors and guiding mechanisms that help it achieve high levels of accuracy. The Storm Shadow can hit a variety of objects such as bridges, ships, buildings, and even underground bunkers. To achieve this, the Storm Shadow has several types of warheads that function differently depending on necessity, and are designed to cause the maximum damage against their intended target type.
In the days and hours following the strike on the S. Ordzhonikidze ship repair plant, more high resolution satellite images became available to the public, now showing in further detail the extent and nature of the damage incurred on the dry docks and on both ships stationed there.
Satellite images taken on September 12, 2023 over Sevastopol show that both the “Rostov-na-Donu” and the “Minsk” were in the dry docks for repair or maintenance, and both ships were indeed present during the time of the strike.
A short video filmed from the location of firefighters putting out the flames after the missile attack showed the heavy blow to the “Minsk”. The extensive damage was evident, with large parts of the superstructure caved in and burnt out on the ship. Even though this type of severe damage can be repaired in theory, realistically it is unlikely that Russia has the capacity to make the “Minsk” seaworthy again.
Further images surfaced in public spaces showing damage to the “Rostov-na-Donu”. The nature of the damage points to the Storm Shadow using the BROACH (Bomb Royal Ordnance Augmented Charge) warhead, a dual stage explosive warhead which operates with the first charge creating a hole in the structure of the target, and the second warhead component penetrating inside the target and detonating, causing further damage to internal components and compromising the structure from inside.
According to an assessment by maritime analysis website Naval News:
“The warhead likely penetrated the forward hull close to the front end of the pressure hull. The Kilo class is a double-hull submarine with an outer casing enclosing the inner pressure hull. The first stage of the tandem warhead, which is designed to penetrate reinforced concrete, probably drove the missile through both the outer and inner hulls. The main warhead would have them [sic] exploded inside the submarine. Indications of this are visible in the upper casing of the submarine which is peeled back, consistent with an explosion blowing outward. Although the hit was in the torpedo room, that was likely empty. So the explosion will have been from the missile’s own warhead.”
These signs of severe internal damage suggest that the “Rostov-na-Donu” is beyond any feasible repair at this time, and that Russia has lost a valuable cruise missile carrier which it previously relied on for bombing Ukraine’s military and cities.
Damage to the dry dock and the ships could also be seen in satellite images taken after the missile attack. Severe fire damage to the dock itself and the ships within it is evident; firefighting crews spraying water could also still be seen on satellite footage two days after the attack, suggesting that either fires are still burning inside the wrecks, or efforts to lower the temperature of the hulls are underway in order to handle them. Regardless, the dry dock will not be functional any time soon, severely hampering Russia’s Black Sea fleet maintenance and logistics capacity.
Satellite images show that as of October 3, 2023, the “Rostov-na-Donu” is covered by a tarp sheet, potentially to hide something from satellites. On October 31, 2023, more high resolution satellite images showed that Russian repair crews were successful in vacating the “Minsk” out of the dry dock. Stripped down and heavily damaged, the ship is now located just slightly north of the dry dock entrance.
Most recently, the deaths of at least four Russian servicemembers was announced in connection with the September 13, 2023 Sevastopol dry dock attack, in addition to an obituary which claimed that the entire crew of the “Minsk” were killed in action during the attack.
