“It was difficult because this is a protected facility, a base. As you can see, recently the Russians practically do not keep their ships, even submarines, at sea. By the way, now they are not there either, precisely because of the danger of defeat. Without much choice, they are forced to actually hide at the base,” Pletenchuk said.
In addition, now is the off-season, which complicates navigation, especially for relatively small watercraft, Pletenchuk noted. He explained that during this period – from mid-autumn to mid-spring – it is quite difficult to leave the base in Novorossiysk due to certain nuances of its location. At the same time, Russian ships are forced to change their mooring location in case of danger – rearrange ships or leave the base in order to avoid being defeated.
“And here, as you can see, they did not feel any danger. In this operation, which has many layers, starting from the development of the weapon itself and ending with planning, with the exception of information leaks, carrying out such an event is a complex and quite complex matter,” he said.
Pletenchuk said that there were only four submarines of the Varshavyanka project in the Black Sea, among them the Rostov-on-Don, which the Russian Federation lost as a result of an attack by the Ukrainian Armed Forces in August 2024. According to his information, there are now two Varshavyanka-class submarines remaining in the Black Sea and one more, which is not a carrier of Caliber.
The speaker of the Ukrainian Navy emphasized that this is the second submarine lost by Russia, and this is a kind of anti-record, because since the Second World War, no country in the world has yet lost a submarine.
