President Vladimir Putin has dismissed the head of the Russian Navy, Admiral Nikolai Yevmenov, in the midst of reorganizing his fleets after the losses suffered by his Black Sea squadron. Yevmenov, 69, will be replaced by the commander of the North Sea Fleet, Alexander Moiseyev, until now responsible for the waters of the Arctic Circle, as military sources have informed Russian media. This change of command comes after the Black Sea Fleet lost two more ships in the last month due to Ukrainian attacks. In total, the squadron responsible for the attacks on Ukraine has lost a third of its ships since the war began.
The Russian Defense Ministry website still maintains Yevmenov as head of the Russian Navy. The admiral assumed command in 2019, although he did not gain direct responsibility for the Black Sea Fleet until December 2023. Previously, command of each fleet had been transferred to the military districts into which Russia is divided, and the functions of the chief of the Navy consisted of the construction of new ships and organizing his squadrons.
Yevmenov, born in Moscow, spent his career in the Pacific Fleet submarine forces from his graduation in 1987 until 2012, when he was transferred as deputy commander to the North Sea fleet. His successor, Moiseyev, also had a career in Russian nuclear submarines and was recognized by Putin as a Hero of Russia in 2011, after completing a successful ballistic missile launch. “I supervised those exercises as supreme commander and, indeed, everything was done very well,” the Russian president stated at the time.
The head of the Navy announced last year the incorporation of 44 new ships to replace its losses. “The special military operation [la invasión de Ucrania] It has shown us that it is necessary to accelerate the work. Everything must be implemented not quickly, but immediately,” Yevmenov declared on the official channel of the Ministry of Defense. “Without long-term experimental work,” added the high command, which also urged its builders to incorporate new defense measures against drones.
Ukrainian forces last struck the Black Sea Fleet on the night of March 4-5. The special forces of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense sank the Russian patrol ship Sergei Kotov near the Kerch Strait. Launched in 2021 and capable of firing cruise missiles, the ship was sunk by marine drones hundreds of kilometers from the coast controlled by kyiv.
A few weeks earlier, Russia had lost its fifth large landing ship in two years of war. The Tsezar (Caesar) Kunikov was destroyed on February 14 south of Crimea in broad daylight by other Ukrainian marine drones. With the loss of her, the Black Sea Fleet has been left with just two of the seven ships of this type, Project 775, which it had assigned at the beginning of the war to land troops and supplies at the front. The rest lie on the seabed or have been seriously damaged.
The Black Sea Fleet has lost 21 of its 70 ships since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, according to information collected from open sources by the Dutch military analysis center Oryx. Among them, its flagship, the missile cruiser Moscowsunk in the open sea in April 2022, and the Kilo-class submarine Rostov del Don in a Crimean port in September 2023.
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