The Ministry of Defense confirms that it was disabled with explosives in the port of Nikolayev to prevent it from falling into Russian hands
The mystery surrounding the sinking of the frigate ‘Hetman Sahaidachniy’ this week in the port city of Nikolayev was resolved yesterday. The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense confirmed that the sinking of her flagship was caused by her own crew so that it would not fall into Russian hands. The ship was beached on its port side after sailors blew up the hull with an explosive charge.
Despite the fact that at first there was speculation of an intervention by saboteurs, or even that the ship suffered an accident due to poor conservation, the Navy explained that it gave the order to sink it in the event that the Kremlin troops captured it in its expansion in southern Ukraine. Nikolayev is one of the enclaves that Moscow considers key to closing the Ukrainian outlet to the Black Sea. It has two ports and once housed three shipyards and the main Ukrainian naval factory. The city has a place in the history of European war tragedy: the Nazis conquered it with blood and fire, killing 35,000 inhabitants.
The ministry specified that, with this action, Russia has been prevented from taking over the ship and its technology, aware that the fall of the port could occur at any time. The occupants are fully engaged in conquering the south, creating a belt that would give enormous support to President Vladimir Putin’s plan to invade the capital. So far, Kiev has withstood the attacks and another of the trump cards that the Kremlin had, the kilometer-long column of armor and tanks formed to crush the resistance, encounters major problems in its advance.
The sinking of the ‘Hetman Sahaidachniy’ represents a major setback for the Ukrainian fleet. The last time the frigate was in service before sailing into the spiral of war was in November in the Gulf of Aden, where she was patrolling to prevent maritime piracy. Ukraine loses it on the eve of a new phase in the confrontation between the two countries with a war at sea. The hypothesis is more plausible as a result of the fact that the Kremlin has set historic Odessa among its immediate objectives, although the difficulties involved in an amphibious operation are far from the rules of ground combat.
Lack of maintenance
Ukraine lacks a powerful Navy. To the absence of adequate maintenance, as sources from the Army itself have denounced in recent years, is added the breakdown that the Crimean War meant for its fleet. So, the base of their ships was in Sevastopol, and after the annexation of the peninsula to Russia, it was transferred to Odessa. But with far fewer ships. Moscow kept 54 of the 67 units that Kiev had moored there and, although it promised to return them, it reneged on its word as soon as the incidents in Donbass began in 2014. In fact, it only returned to Ukraine the oldest and most in need of maintenance financially very high.
Russia not only kept the best frigates, boats and destroyers. Also her staff. Of the 8,000 Ukrainian soldiers who made up the Sevastopol fleet, 6,000 decided to join the Russian Navy, whose salaries were and continue to be higher. If you take into account that in 2013 Ukraine had 14,000 sailors, it is clear that the shipwreck comes from afar.
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