Nato War In Ukraine - Black Sea Operations

Ukraine mined its own harbors,^[1] with the military advice of NATO, blocking their own export of their own grain harvest.

On March 24, 2023 former president and Security Council deputy chair Dmitry Medvedev told Sputnik news,

Attack on the Moskva[edit]

On April 19, 2022, the Times of London reported that the United States was indeed responsible for the April 13 sinking of the Moskva by relaying information to the AFU on the location of the ship via P-8 Poseidon surveillance aircraft with anti-ship and anti-submarine capabilities.^[2] Moskva was positioned near one of 3 drilling rigs, used for monitoring a whole sector of the Black Sea with hydrophones and NEVA-BS radar, the most westward one, BK-2 Odessa, approximately 66 km northeast from Snake Island (Russian: Zmeiny Island). The whole thing was integrated in the regional monitoring systems. According to an article in the Strategic Culture Foundation a source in Brussels told independent journalist Pepe Escobar,^[3]

The Moskva was disabled and sunk on April 13, 2022, reportedly with NATO assistance.^[4]

Humanitarian corridor for safe passage of foreign ships established by the Russian Navy.

The provocation marked a significant escalation of electronic warfare in international waters and airspace with Russian public opinion and the families of missing sailors demanding a response from their government. On May 23, 2022, it was announced that Denmark would provide an unspecified number of US-made Harpoon anti-ship missiles and launchers to Ukraine.^[5] Denmark's supply of Harpoon missiles to Ukraine to fight the Russian Black Sea Fleet sent off alarm bells in the Kremlin, revealing the goals of NATO's "coalition of the willing" for provocative engagements with Russia's Black Sea fleet. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Rudenko noted that if foreign warships enter the Black Sea under the pretext of escorting civilian ships with grain, this would inevitably lead to the war between Russia and NATO. Russia would be concerned about escorting ships with grain, especially if they were British ships. On May 25 according to Radio Liberty Moscow offered safe passage of Ukrainian food exports.^[6] The Russian Defense Ministry opened the first humanitarian corridor for foreign ships from Mariupol. In a telephone conversation with Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer, a neutral intermediary, TASS reported that President Putin said Ukraine should de-mine its ports to ensure free passage of the blocked ships as soon as possible.^[7]

In early June 2022, the Russians set up an S-400 surface-to-air missile system on Snake Island.

Oil rigs in the Black Sea attacked by Ukraine, June 20, 2022.

On June 20, 2022 three oil drilling platforms in the Black Sea west of Crimea were attacked by the AFU, killing 7 civilians. 94 people were rescued, 3 injured, 1 with shrapnel and 2 with burns. 8 people remain missing. The oil platforms are non-military, civilian projects. The Kyiv regime claims residents of Crimea re Ukrainian citizens; the Kyiv regime gave no explanation for murdering its own citizens working on a civilian infrastructure project. Russia’s Investigative Committee opened a criminal case on the terrorist attack by Ukrainian troops on the oil drilling platforms. Authorities will find out information about the Ukrainian military who carried out the strikes, and investigators will also establish the manufacturer of the missiles and if NATO is complicit in an act of terrorism.

A U.S. Air Force Global Hawk RQ-4 strategic reconnaissance UAV was detected at high altitude over Snake Island of the U.S. Air Force at high altitudes near Snake Island. The Kyiv regime made another attempt to capture the island. Missile and artillery attacks at Snake Island were launched by Ukrainian Tochka-U ballistic missiles, Uragan multiple rocket launchers and M777 155-mm howitzers from their combat positions to the west from Odessa and in Kubansky island. The plan disembarkation of troops on the island. d by the Kiev regime supposed to launch massive air and artillery attacks at Snake Island, to disembark troops and capture it. 13 UAVs, 4 Tochka-U missiles and 21 projectiles of Uragan multiple rocket launcher were destroyed by Russian forces. No troops were able to disembark and occupy the island.

The attack was used to lure Russian aircraft into the area, with the idea of shooting them down with S-300s. Once activated, the S-300s were detected and destroyed by the Russian airforce.^[8]

UK Royal Navy unmanned surface vessel washed up on shore in Crimea in June 2022.^[9]

On June 25, 2022, the AFU attacked Snake Island with several missiles and aircraft; the US Navy P-8A patrol aircraft was spotted flying from Sigonella Air Base in the Danube Delta area; the US RQ-4B was spotted flying from the Sigonella Air Base in the Black Sea; the US Navy transferred 18 coastal and riverine patrol boats to Ukraine; the US EP-3E aircraft was spotted flying from the Suda Bay Air Base over the eastern part of Romania near the Moldovan border.

On June 26, 2022, the AFU attacked Chernomorneftegaz drilling rig in the Black Sea. No casualties were reported.

On July 31, 2022, the 326th celebration of Russia's Navy Day National Holiday, a drone attacked the headquarters of Russia's Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol.^[10]

On September 20, 2022, Russia's submarine fleet was removed from the Black Sea and headed for open waters.

On October 29, 2022, at 4:20 A.M. local time the Russian Fleet was attacked by nine unmanned aerial vehicles and seven UK Royal Navy autonomous maritime drones. Commercially available boats or jet-skis were modified for this mission. A remotely controlled camera and infrared sensor has been attached to the vessels which were laden with explosives and outer contours had fuses attached. When the craft rammed its target, the fuse activated the explosive. The aerial drones were launched from commercial ships inside the humanitarian corridor for grain shipments. During the attack a U.S. Global Hawk drone flew in circles south of Crimea relaying data from and to the drones. A minesweeper and two ships involved in the grain escort program were damaged.^[11]

Odessa[edit]

Some dispute existed between analysts and observers whether Russian war planners intended an encirclement of Odessa. After 31 days of fighting, no serious efforts appeared to have taken place. General Dmytro Marchenko, who is in charge of the garrison in Mykolaiv (Russ: Nikolayev), vowed that for each Ukrainian who dies, he and his men will kill ten Russians and warned that any attacking troops will end up as food for stray dogs in the streets.^[12]

On April 13, 2022, a Russian Ministry of Defense spokesman said,

This was interpreted to mean Ukrainian attacks or provocations on Crimea, which was accepted into the Russian Federation in 2014 by a vote of the Russian State Duma after a popular plebiscite in Crimea overwhelmingly made the request, could result in missile attacks on military and political command centers in Kyiv. NATO would like to occupy the deep water port of Sevastopol, which has been a major objective of NATO's actions in Ukraine since 2008. On February 19, 2022, five days before the Special Military Operation in Ukraine began, the Atlantic Council published a paper which had been long in the works entitled, NATO must seize the current strategic opportunity in the Black Sea.^[14] On April 14, 2022, The Washington Examiner reported members of Congress asked the U.S. intelligence community specifically to aid Ukraine if it made efforts against Crimea.^[15]

On April 23, 2022, fascist dictator Volodymyr Zelensky said that Odessa may become “another Mariupol” soon. The AFU was accumulating forces for the defense of the city and providing the supply of weapons from Romania and fuel from Moldova to the troops in the Mykolaiv and Krivoy Rog regions. Russian missile strikes targeted AFU military infrastructure facilities. Russian servicemen struck a military airfield near Odessa. According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, a large batch of weapons from the United States and the EU was destroyed.

Zatoka bridge, May 21, 2022.

To marr Moscow's May 9 Victory Day celebrations in commemoration of the 77th Anniversary of the defeat of the Banderite's Western allies, Nazi Germany, the Kyiv regime in conjunction with US and NATO war planners attempted a massive assault to retake Snake Island. The offensive failed, with more than 60 AFU forces dead, the loss of 4 bombers, 10 helicopters, 3 amphibious assault ships, and at least 30 Bayraktar drones. Sources say an American and UK high-ranking officers went missing after the attack. An American marine lieutenant colonel and an English major from the commando brigade of the marine corps, landed on Snake Island together with Ukrainian fighters. They coordinated the work of NATO intelligence assets and the Ukrainian landing forces. Russian missiles also destroyed a massive NATO ammunition dump housed in a civilian infrastructure shopping mall in Odessa.

On May 26, 2022 Southfront reported that because of the threat to the Black Sea fleet with the delivery of Harpoon missiles to Ukraine by Denmark, the Russian Federation may accelerate its combat operations in Odessa before the missiles are deployed with the Ukrainian military.^[16]

By May 31, 2022, the Zatoka bridge across the Dniester River which carried NATO weapons and fuel from Romania to Odessa was struck 8 times by Russia and rebuilt 7 times by Ukraine.^[17]

In early June 2022, a British film production company began filming fake, staged combat footage near Mikoleav, completed with role players dressed as Russians, to show the alleged heroism and courage to the world of Ukrainian fighters.

On June 16, 2022, the Russian MOD reported the elimination of another 200 Ukrainian troops in the Nikolaev region. Ukrainians hit a Russian tug boat with a Harpoon missile.

On June 19, 2922, high-precision long-distance Kalibr cruise missiles destroyed ten M777 155-mm Howitzers and up to 20 armored combat vehicles delivered by the West to the Kyiv regime in recent days that were hidden in a transformer plant in Nikolayev.

On June 22, 2022, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced the destruction of up to 500 Ukrainian soldiers at the Okean ship building plant in Nikolaev.

From August 5 to 7, 2022 the entire city of Nikolayev was locked down during a door-to-door hunt of its residents by the Kyiv regime's brownshirts to root out hundreds of "traitors and collaborators".

By late August 2022, while thousands of tons of grain were being shipped out of the Port of Odessa to pay Ukraine's foreign debt, continue the corrupt regime operations and pay for the war, residents of Odessa lined up for bread rations.^[18]

On September 9, 2022, sea-based high-precision long-range weapons hit the deployment point of the 35th Marine Brigade in the Odessa region, where reservists for the AFU were trained. More than 200 personnel were destroyed, as well as other NATO equipment. A high-precision Russian weapon destroyed a launcher of the American-made Ukrainian Harpoon missile system.

On October 18, 2022, the Russian MOD reported the destruction of a Ukrainian government space communications station near the village of Palievka located 20 km from the city of Odessa.

On November 19, 2022, protests erupted in the predominantly Russian city of Odessa, which has been relatively unaffected by the fighting, to protest the Kyiv regime's imposed electrical blackouts.^[19] The Kyiv regime is implemented electrical rationing, transferring electrical power from unaffected areas to areas with outages.

Odessa lost water supply on November 23, 2022.

The Zatoka bridge was hit again on February 9, 2023.

UK military-intelligence organization[edit]

Leaked documents revealed that British military-intelligence organizations were training a guerrilla army of 'stay behind' sabotage groups to attack Russian military and civilian targets in Crimea. The investigative news website The Grayzone named the key players working with the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) in Odessa to set up the covert force.^[20] They include military consultant Hugh Ward, who works for private security firm Rezolutionz, MI6 veteran Guy Spindler, former Lithuanian defense minister Audrius Butkevicius and veteran intelligence agent Chris Donnelly. The Grayzone also reported that British private military contractor Prevail Partners, founded by former Royal Marines Brigadier and Special Boat Service (SBS) commander Justin Hedges and other ex-commandoes, had been hired to train the new guerrilla force.

The Greyzone reported Spindler and Butkevicius lobbied governments to ramp up funding for the program. Internal emails seen by the site asked: "will Uncle Sam pay for this?" while a "costed proposal" to the British Ministry of Defense had been "turned down for risk reasons."

Alex Finnen, of the British army Specialist Group Military Intelligence section of the 77 Brigade cyber-warfare centre and the Foreign Office's Russia Unit, said in one email from March 2022 that the proposal — tendered at $600,000 per insurgent per year — was “very expensive for what it is,” although the firm was in a "seller's market". “I suspect that they have taken the first figure they thought of and then doubled it. So, there needs to be more discussion as to how and what these people are going to do,” Finnen wrote. “Partisans live in and amongst the people. That suggests that you need people from across Ukraine, in small teams to take part as Prevail suggest ‘oblast by oblast’. How are they going to achieve this?”

Justin Hedges claimed that his firm could do a much better job by training 40-strong groups in guerrilla warfare tactics. He said funding could be “provided by flowing ‘donations’ through Prevail's established NGO, Rhizome Insights Ltd,” without leaving a clear trail from governments to the mercenary firm.

Russia accused the UK of complicity in the September 26, 2022 bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines across the Baltic Sea, the October 8, 2022 truck bombing of the Kerch Strait bridge to Crimea and the October 29, 2022 attack on the Crimean port of Sevastopol with seven marine and nine aerial drones. Other incidents in the Crimean peninsula are suspected to be the work of covert units, including an explosion at a military airfield in August 2022 and an attack using a small drone to drop explosives.

Kerch Strait bridge attack[edit]

The Ukrainian government took credit for the terrorist attack and destruction of civilian infrastructure on the Kerch Strait bridge.^[21]

The Grayzone obtained an April 2022 documents entitled, AUDACIOUS: Support for Ukraine Maritime Raiding Operations,^[22] drawn up for senior British intelligence officers hashing out an elaborate scheme to blow up Crimea's Kerch Bridge with the involvement of specially trained Ukrainian soldiers.^[23]

In August 2022 Zelensky aid Mykhailo Podolyak told the Guardian there could be more attacks in the “next two or three months” similar to strikes on a railway junction and an airbase in Crimea, as well as a hit on Russian warplanes at Crimea's Saky aerodrome. Podolyak told the Guardian that the Kerch Strait bridge linking Crimea with the Russian mainland was a target. “It’s an illegal construction and the main gateway to supply the Russian army in Crimea. Such objects should be destroyed,” he said.^[24] On August 18, 2022, the Russians reported shooting down surveillance drones over the Kerch Strait bridge.

Podolyak took credit for the terrorist attack and destruction of civilian infrastructure: "Crimea, the bridge, the beginning. Everything illegal must be destroyed, everything stolen must be returned to Ukraine, everything occupied by Russia must be expelled."^[25] The Washington Post reported that the Security Service of Ukrainian (SBU) were behind the terrorist attack.^[26][27] The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) determined that Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukrainian military intelligence, was the chief organizer on the Ukrainian end.^[28] Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba confirmed that the Kyiv regime was behind the terrorist attack.^[29][30] The Ukrainian Post Office issued a commemorative stamp to honor the terrorist attack.^[31] The attack was an act of state-sponsored terrorism by the government of Ukraine with U.S. taxpayer money.

Turkstream[edit]

The FSB announced on September 22, 2022, that it foiled an attempted terrorist attack by Russian nationals on the US/NATO/Kyiv payroll to blow up one the TurkStream natural gas pipeline from Russia to Turkiye.^[32] On October 13, 2022, a second group of sabotuers were arrested in Russia for attempting to blow up the pipeline in a second failed attempt.^[33]

Moscow claimed the US is actively waging a hybrid war of terror against its own NATO ally, Turkiye, as evidenced by its role in orchestrating the YPG-PKK's recent terrorist attack in Istanbul, and the second foiled attempt since September using proxies to sabotage the TurkStream pipeline. These asymmetrical acts of aggression were carried out for the purpose of punishing President Erdogan for his rising multipolar independent foreign policy and refusal to participate in sanctions.^[34]

NATO-backed Nazi insurgency[edit]

See also: NATO-backed Ukrainian Nazi terrorism and insurgency

By mid-August 2022, the Ukrainian and NATO switch in strategy to guerrilla insurgent operations became more obvious with sabotage operations conducted against an airbase and ammunition depot in Crimea, a nuclear power plant in Kursk, and a gas pipeline in Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad) on Russian Federation territory. On August 20, 2022, Dr. Darya Dugina, a journalist and political scientist and the daughter of Russian philosopher and theoretician Alexander Dugin, was assassinated in Moscow.^[35] Dugina's name was on the CIA/SBU "Peacemaker" hit list.

Journalist and political scientist Darya Dugina was assassinated in Moscow on August 20, 2022.^[36] Dugina is the daughter of the Russian political scientist and philosopher Alexander Dugin.

Darya's killer was identified as Natalia Pavlovna Vovk, a Ukrainian citizen and member of the Azov Regiment.^[37] The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation established the SBU as responsible for the killing.^[38]

Russia warns the UK government[edit]

On November 3, 2022, Russia summoned the British Ambassador to Moscow, Deborah Bronnert, over claims that the UK provided training to Ukrainian forces that attacked Russia's Black Sea Fleet in Crimea. The Russian Foreign Ministry presented the diplomat with a “steadfast protest” and warned her that London’s hostile actions “could lead to unpredictable and dangerous consequences,” according to a statement published on the ministry's website. “If acts of aggression that risk turning [Britain] into a direct party in the conflict continue, the British side will solely bear the responsibility for their negative consequences and the increase in tensions between our countries,” the ministry said.^[39]

According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, the Ukrainian Navy conducted dives and a target detonation exercise in the Black Sea and on the shore near the cities of Odessa, Nikolayev, as well as Ochakov with the help of British experts. The Ambassador received a vehement complaint over the British military specialists' active involvement in training and supplying the units of the Ukrainian special operations forces, especially with the intention of carrying out acts of sabotage at sea. The demarche highlighted how such aggressive behavior by the British raises the possibility of an escalation and might have unforeseen and catastrophic results.

According to the ministry, “An agreement was reached in September 2020 between London and Kyiv to expand the British instructors’ training programme for Ukrainian military divers.” Further, it stated that the Naval Training Initiative for the Ukrainian Navy, which includes combat swimmer training programs, was put into action by the parties in late 2020.^[40]

Ministry underlined that the Joint Multinational Training Group - Ukraine initiative significantly strengthens naval cooperation between the United Kingdom and Ukraine. This work is done at a different Ataman Golovaty Special Operations Center "South" of the Ukrainian Special Operations Forces in the city of Ochakov, Nikolayev region, and it contains training underwater special operations personnel for carrying out operations in the Black Sea and Azov Sea.

Special operations divers are being trained in a military diving school in Odessa, which is a part of the 198th training facility for the Ukrainian Navy, Military Unit A3163, Nikolayev. This training includes deep-sea subversive techniques, among other things. The minesweeper personnel that was sent to Ukraine were taught by the British in the months of August 2022 and September, the ministry reported.^[41]

References[edit]