Russia's Black Sea Fleet is now facing attacks from underwater Ukrainian sabotage forces, a local governor says

• Russia's Black Sea Fleet has been facing apparent attacks from underwater Ukrainian sabotage forces.
• A local governor said was the fleet was "repelling a possible attack by underwater sabotage forces and enemy assets," TASS reported.

Russia's Black Sea Fleet has been facing apparent attacks from underwater Ukrainian sabotage forces as Moscow's war with Kyiv grinds on, according to a local governor.

Governor Mikhail Razvozhaev of Sevastopol, where the Black Sea Fleet's headquarters is based, said in a Monday post on his Telegram channel that "loud sounds" coming from the outer harbor are from the Black Sea Fleet "repelling a possible attack by underwater sabotage forces and enemy assets," Russian state news agency TASS reported.

Last month, British intelligence said that Ukraine's military had beefed up its attacks against the Russian naval fleet based in the occupied Crimean Peninsula, causing more destruction than ever.

The Black Sea Fleet has recently been hammered by a series of major attacks by Ukrainian forces, including missile strikes on its headquarters.

"These attacks have been more damaging and more coordinated than thus far" in Russian President Vladimir Putin's 20-month invasion of Ukraine, the UK's Ministry of Defence said in an intelligence update in late September.

War analysts said this month that Ukraine's strikes on Russian military assets in Crimea have been "degrading" Moscow's Black Sea Fleet, but the fleet hasn't been defeated yet.

"Strikes on Black Sea Fleet assets are degrading its role as a combined arms headquarters but have not defeated it as a naval force," the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington, DC-based think tank, said in a recent assessment.