Moscow says Russia destroyed Ukraine’s “last warship” in the Black Sea

• A spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry said the last warship of the Ukrainian navy had been destroyed.
• Russia claimed that the ship Yuri Oliverenko was hit by “high-precision weapons” in the port of Odessa.
• Reports said that the Ukrainian Navy refuses to comment on any Russian allegations.

The Russian Defense Ministry said earlier this week that Russian forces had destroyed “the last Ukrainian warship” in the port of Odessa.

“The last warship of the Ukrainian Navy, Yury Oliverenko, was destroyed in a warship moored in the port of Odessa,” said Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov. in the telegraph.

Russia said Yuriy Oliverenko was hit on Monday by missiles Konashenkov described as “high-precision weapons”. Reuters.

Although Ukraine has not yet confirmed what happened, I confess Heavy Russian airstrikes damaged the port infrastructure of Odessa on Monday.

The claims of both sides were not immediately verified.

Russia rarely targeted the port after signing the UN-backed Black Sea Grains Initiative last year. The deal allowed Ukraine To resume grain exports that pass through the sea To help alleviate the global food crisis since the Russian invasion.

The Yuriy Olefirenko, a Soviet-era landing ship, may have played an “important role” in the Ukrainian operations, According to Forbes magazineespecially during the last year during the liberation of Kherson – a city near the Black Sea coast on the Dnipro River.

The warship may have supported Ukrainian missions on the Kinburn Spit, a three-mile finger-like strip that extends into the Black Sea where it meets the Dnipro River.

Whichever side holds the piece of land can control the movement of ships between the ports of Kherson, Mykolaiv and the Black Sea, according to Forbes.

Ukrainian forces liberated Kherson last November. Russian and Ukrainian forces are locked in a bloody battle on the islands, swamps and inlets of the nearby Dnipro Delta, Insider recently reported.

However, one expert believes that the potential destruction of the ship “has almost no impact on the offensive capability of the Ukrainian navy,” said Frederic Mertens, an analyst at The Hague Center for Strategic Studies, Newsweek in an interview.

The ship, built in 1970, can only carry about four Ukrainian tanks, Mertens said, while a similar, larger ship in the 20th century could carry four times that amount.