“The commander of the Russian Black Sea fleet is dead”: Kiev claims the killing of Admiral Sokolov
“34 officers were killed, including the commander of the Black Sea Fleet.” Thus the Ukrainian Special Operations Forces claimed responsibility for the killing of Russian Admiral Viktor Sokolov in occupied Crimea. If confirmed, this would be a major blow to the Russian Navy following last Friday’s attack on the Fleet headquarters in Sevastopol.
In the attack, unprecedented in the Ukrainian conflict, a total of 34 Russian officers, including Sokolov, lost their lives. “Another 105 members of the occupying forces were injured,” Ukrainian special forces said in a statement.
Sokolov, 61, took command of the Black Sea Fleet in August 2022. He replaced Admiral Igor Osipov after the sensational sinking of the cruiser Moskva, flagship of the Fleet. According to Kiev, at the time of the attack, a high-level meeting was being held at the Sevastopol headquarters in which the admiral was also present. The culmination of months of incursions into the peninsula that the Russian Federation annexed in 2014 and which Vladimir Putin considers an integral part of Russia. To the point that any Ukrainian attempt to retake Crimea would cross a “red line”, as highlighted last February by the US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.
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