Russia's navy pulled its last patrol boat from Crimea, Ukraine says, after getting pummelled for months

• Russia has pulled its last Black Sea Fleet warship from Crimea, a Ukrainian navy spokesperson said.
• Dmitry Pletenchuk said Monday that the Russian patrol ship was "leaving our Crimea right now."

Russia has pulled its last Black Sea Fleet warship out from Crimea, according to a Ukrainian official.

Dmitry Pletenchuk, a spokesperson for the Naval Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, made the statement in a Facebook post on Monday.

"The last patrol ship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet is leaving our Crimea right now. Remember this day," he said, per a translation by the state-affiliated Ukrainian news outlet Militarnyi.

The Naval Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine made a similar comment in a Telegram post on Tuesday, saying there were no longer any Russian naval ships in the Black Sea.

Pletenchuk did not name the ship, but in March he told Ukrainian TV that Russia had only one "loser" missile ship left in the waters.

Pletenchuk and the Naval Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

If true, it could mark the end of Russia's Black Sea Fleet presence around Crimea.

Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, and has used its Sevastopol Naval Base as the primary headquarters for the Black Sea Fleet.

Ukraine has repeatedly struck back in the region since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, destroying or damaging around half of the Russian fleet's warships, including one submarine, according to publicly available information.

Earlier this year, Ukraine's military claimed to have destroyed a third of Russia's Black Sea Fleet.

It has used aerial drones, sea drones, and anti-ship missiles against the fleet and the Kerch Bridge, to often devastating effect.

In March, the UK's Ministry of Defence declared the Black Sea Fleet "functionally inactive."

Ukraine's campaign pushed Russian warships to withdraw to bases in the port cities of Feodosia, on the far side of Crimea, and Novorossiysk, in Russia.

But even there, Russia's navy has come under attack, with Ukrainian drones targeting the Novorossiysk port in May.

Russia's navy has started using the more protected Sea of Azov to fire missiles at Ukraine, because it considers it "safer" than the Black Sea, Pletenchuk told the Kyiv Independent last month.

According to Basil Germond, an expert in international security at Lancaster University in the UK, Ukraine's recent successes are not "anecdotal."

"Ukraine is slowly but steadily getting the upper hand in the Black Sea," he told BI, adding that Russia's Black Sea Fleet "has lost control of the Black Sea."

This, Germond said, is a "significant" problem for Russia: warships are some of the most expensive military assets in a country's arsenal and can take more than a decade to procure and make operational.

And due to the Montreux Convention — an 87-year-old agreement that limits what Russia and NATO can send into the Black Sea — Russia is not able to reinforce its fleet there with ships from the Baltic or Northern fleets, Germond said, forcing Russia to look at how to better protect its naval assets in the waters.

"It is definitely a key objective now since Russia cannot afford to lose more, which explains the frequent 're-deployment' further away from Crimea," he said.

Politically, Germond said that these setbacks are a "blow" to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"Russia looks weak in Crimea, and that is highly problematic for Putin's regime given the central role that Crimea plays in Putin's imperialist narrative," he said, adding: "The symbolic value of these successes shall not be underestimated."