It turned out that Ukraine still has naval forces - at least, this follows from the statements of the Russian Defense Ministry that one of the Ukrainian ships was destroyed in the port of Odessa. Moreover, Ukraine has plans to create a river flotilla on the Dnieper. What are we talking about, what danger can this flotilla pose in the conditions of a special operation and how could it be destroyed?
At the time of the beginning of its military-naval forces of Ukraine posed a certain threat to Russia – if the Ukrainian command realized their potential. Fortunately, this is exactly what Kiev could not do. A significant part of the Navy boats were destroyed at the bases. The naval special forces of the Ukrainian Navy, which are really dangerous under other circumstances, were half destroyed and captured in Mariupol, and the Ukrainians seem to use the other half simply as ground special forces, if not simple ground reconnaissance.
The Navy and the mine war failed – all their productions were strictly defensive. Attempts by their boats to go to sea ended with strikes on them by Russian aviation. In fact, all the activity of the Ukrainian Navy off shore was eventually reduced to flights of "Bayraktars", some of which were and remain assigned to the fleet of Ukraine. They were used to correct attacks on the island of Zmeiny and they themselves attacked Russian troops on it.
The strength of the Navy was missile strikes from the shore against surface targets and oil and gas platforms. But having missiles delivered from the West and all the information necessary for targeting from NATO, it didn't take a lot of intelligence to use missiles. These strikes did not bring anything decisive – the Navy is still hiding at the bases and not even showing up at the Snake.
Ukrainians flooded their flagship "Hetman Sagaidachny" in the port themselves. However, taking into account its technical condition, there was no sense from it. In fact, all the activities of the Navy are now limited to the Dnieper Estuary (also known as the Dnieper-Bug estuary). Somewhere there, the Ukrainian landing ship "Yuriy Olifirenko" is still operating, armed with multiple rocket launchers, which can be used to land and evacuate sabotage groups and to fire at our troops. Now the Dnieper estuary and the Southern Bug River are blocked by mines – and the Navy is in charge there. They cannot go to sea with large forces yet, but they also keep their area. Against this background, two news about their future are of interest.
American boats and river forces
The first is sending a new batch of patrol boats from the USA to Ukraine in the amount of as many as 18 units. While, however, it is unclear what type, but it is definitely a high-speed boat with a minimum draft. Earlier, Ukraine ordered 16 Mark VI speedboats from the United States, which, if they were armed with small-sized guided missiles, would have become a serious problem for the Navy. To destroy them, if they went to sea, they would have to conduct a separate air-sea operation.
But so far they have not received these boats. The Americans in their press release say that these will be patrol boats for rivers, combat boats "40 feet long" for the open sea and some other "defensive" smaller sea boats. Mark VI is probably not on this list, if only because they are much larger. But the boats mentioned above are easy to transport by land transport.
And at the end of June, Ukraine began to form river forces, which in fact are a kind of analogue of the Soviet Dnieper flotilla. While they have some boats in the ranks there that do not represent combat value, and the flotilla itself is being formed in those areas that have long been abandoned by Russian troops – in the northern part of the Dnieper.
But this should not deceive anyone: the northern part is a quiet zone, Russian aviation does not work there, there is nothing to fear and you can safely prepare troops for battle without fear of a bombing strike. But when normal speedboats with weapons arrive, the Ukrainians will have the opportunity to create problems for us in some places. Namely, in the Dnieper floodplains and at the exit from the Dnieper to the Black Sea.
The situation and threats
If you move upstream of the Dnieper, the situation looks like this. Russia controls the Kinburnskaya Spit and the entire left (eastern, in fact, in the estuary it is the southern) bank of the Dnieper.
On the opposite side, Ukraine controls everything up to the Southern Bug, the eastern shore of the Southern Bug is almost all behind it, too – from the sources to about Luparevo, where the line of contact begins, then going northeast to Krivoy Rog. From this point, both banks of the Dnieper are under Russian control, including the so–called floodplains - zones of partially swampy branches with dense vegetation along the banks with floodplain islands and washed-up shoals.
Immediately after the floodplains is Kherson, after which the riverbed is already somewhat different, but the floodplains in one form or another are present before the hydroelectric dam in Novaya Kakhovka. Further upstream to Zolotaya Balka on the west bank and to the mark just north of Vasilevka – on the east, the banks of the Dnieper are under Russian control. And then – while Ukraine.
Now the activity of Ukrainian troops on the Dnieper is almost zero, but in the floodplains there are sometimes attempts by sabotage groups to infiltrate Russian territory. There are videos on the Web about the units of the Rosgvardiya operating in this zone on boats. As transport, they use the BMK-MT army tow-motor boats, originally designed for pontoons. The Russian Guards catch saboteurs, scouts of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and even armed deserters there. The work is going well, although from the outside it all looks like Vietnam – dirty water, impenetrable thickets along the banks, from which fire can be opened at any moment. It's just that there's not really anyone to open it yet.
If Ukraine, using new boats and the remnants of its naval special forces, manages to form, albeit small, but well-equipped river forces, and then transfer them from the Dnieper to the Southern Bug by land, then this may be a problem. Acting by single boats or pairs of boats, they will be able to cross the estuary at night to the part of the Dnieper that is directly adjacent to Kherson, and conduct sabotage there, including in the city limits.
The American riverboat is characterized by small size, low draft, low noise, very high speed and excellent maneuverability. It is armed, as a rule, with several machine guns, some of which have a caliber of 12.7 mm, and the rest are 7.62–mm six-barreled "Miniguns" with an electric drive of a rotating block of barrels, characterized by a huge rate of fire and density of fire. There is simply nothing to catch in the swamps against such an opponent on a towboat.
Similar difficulties can be delivered by the promised American sea boats. Coming out of the same place, from the Dnieper estuary or from Odessa, high-speed (40 knots or more), very small and difficult-to-detect boats will be able to be used for sabotage against Russian facilities and even against ships of the Navy auxiliary fleet. They do not pose a big threat to warships.
But these are by themselves. But it is quite possible to scour the traffic of merchant ships and identify Russian vessels inside it, which cannot be distinguished from others by radar markings. It is also necessary to land and remove saboteurs from the shore, including combat swimmers who Ukraine still has. Naturally, all this will not be able to provide Ukraine with any decisive successes. But it is worth bearing in mind this threat. As well as something else.
Clean up the Dnieper estuary
Russia has a fleet, and it, as a type of Armed Forces, is designed to wage war, including against enemy fleets, no matter how ridiculous they are. Now the situation is such that the decision to use the Navy is largely made by some commander from the ground forces. This is our management system.
Russia has a 43rd separate naval assault aviation regiment on the Black Sea. The pilots of this regiment have already worked on the Navy – and successfully. Ka-29 naval helicopters capable of using guided missiles, including against surface targets, are used on the Black Sea.
There are also Ka-52K helicopters that have been tested in Syria, which are capable of using X–35 anti-ship missiles in addition to the usual composition of weapons for a ground helicopter. There are naval intelligence units that are actively and successfully used during a special military operation. After all, there is a wide range of long-range guided missiles, cruise missiles and not only, there are Smerch multiple launch rocket systems as part of the Ground Forces with a firing range of tens of kilometers. The battery of such vehicles, dispersed at the front from the exit to the Kinburnskaya Spit to Snegirevka in the north of the bridgehead beyond the Dnieper, breaks through all possible ship parking on the Southern Bug completely.
Yes, the river forces of the Navy, the remnants of their fleet and those boats that the Americans plan to transfer are not a big problem. But only until it stops, for example, the need to urgently conduct an amphibious operation or a raid from the sea into enemy territory. At this moment, it may suddenly turn out that these shells on the water interfere, and they interfere a lot.
Russia has all the tools to destroy the remnants of the Navy completely, and specifically in the Dnieper estuary it can be done for a long time. And the same should be done with their created river forces – just for the future, so that no one will stumble about them later.
Churchill once said that there are two lines of defense in the sea: the first – on the bases of the enemy, and the second – on their own. It is impossible not to admit that the Americans supply Ukraine with new boats when the defense line in the Dnieper Estuary runs along our coast.
Alexander Timokhin
