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“You Won’t Hide”: Ukraine Strikes Russian Warship Admiral Essen for Fourth Time
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Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces struck the Russian frigate Admiral Essen at Novorossiysk overnight on May 23, the third reported Ukrainian drone attack on the warship since early March.
Robert "Magyar" Brovdi, commander of the Unmanned Systems Forces, confirmed the operation on Facebook on the same day.
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"You are doomed to sink someday, you scab — you won't hide," Brovdi wrote, addressing the frigate directly in a post that framed the strike as the latest in a recurring Ukrainian effort against the same warship.
Brovdi listed additional Russian military and energy targets struck during the same overnight operation, including:
the Russian frigate Admiral Essen of Project 11356, hit near a pier in the Novorossiysk naval base;
a Project 1239 missile corvette on air cushion at the same naval base;
both terminals of the Novorossiysk "Sheskharis" oil complex and the "Grushovaya Balka" oil storage site, described by Brovdi as the largest petroleum reservoir in the Caucasus, holding 1.2 million tons of fuel.
The two earlier Ukrainian attacks on the Admiral Essen also struck the vessel at Novorossiysk. A March 2 drone strike reportedly damaged the ship's central superstructure and onboard radar components.
A third attack on April 6 hit the bow section near the A-190 100 mm naval gun, affecting anchor handling and auxiliary compartments and raising concerns about damage to the submarine-detection sonar below the waterline.
Open-source analysts assessed that the April strike may have impaired the frigate's ability to leave port unaided—a critical concern, since Russian warships typically move offshore before launching cruise missiles.
The Admiral Essen is a Project 11356R "Burevestnik"-class guided missile frigate built for Russia's Black Sea Fleet and launched in 2014. The ship carries 3M14 "Kalibr" cruise missiles, the "Shtil-1" surface-to-air system, and a 100 mm A-190 naval gun. It has been used in Russian missile strikes against Syria in 2017 and against Ukraine since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022.
The port of Novorossiysk has emerged as a recurring target node for Ukrainian long-range strike units, combining naval basing with major energy export infrastructure on the eastern Black Sea coast.
Earlier in May, a joint operation by Ukraine's Defense Forces and the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) struck two tankers linked to Russia's shadow oil fleet near the entrance to the port.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the action as part of Kyiv's effort to impose military "sanctions" on vessels used to move Russian crude past Western enforcement.
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