Ukraine-Russia war: Moscow Confirms Warship Hit In Black Sea As Putin’s Forces Bomb Rail Station

Russia’s Defence Ministry confirmed its warship was hit in a Ukrainian strike by plane-launched guided missiles.

Novocherkassk, one of Vladimir Putin’s prized Black Sea fleet, was hit at Feodosiya in Russian-occupied Crimea early yesterday.

It comes as Russian forces shelled the railway station in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson yesterday as a train was set to evacuate residents, killing one policeman and injuring four people, interior minister Ihor Klymenko said.

Klymenko said about 140 civilians had been at the station in the early evening and quick action by police to direct them away saved many lives.

“Thanks to the clear actions of the police, everyone was successfully taken to safe places,” Mr Klymenko said on Telegram. “Unfortunately, a police lieutenant from the Kirovohrad region lost his life due to the shelling. … Two more police officers are in the hospital with shrapnel wounds.”

Two civilians were also being treated for shrapnel wounds.

Ukrainian railways said evacuees were taken from the station by bus northwest to the town of Mykolaiv, which has been subject to fewer Russian attacks. Delayed trains were rescheduled.

Russia will soon deploy its newest howitzers to its Northern Military District which borders Finland and Norway, the head of the Rostec state defence conglomerate said in remarks published on Wednesday.

The testing of the new Coalition-SV self-propelled artillery units has been completed and their mass production has already started, Sergei Chemezov, the head of Rostec told the state RIA news agency in an interview.

The first pilot batch will be delivered by the end of 2023, he said.

“I think they will appear there (in the Northern Military District) soon, since howitzers of this class are needed to provide an advantage over Western artillery models in terms of firing range,” Mr Chemezov said.

In 2021, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin changed the status of the Russian Northern Fleet, whose zone of responsibility was chiefly the Russian Arctic, to the Northern Military District, incorporating into it also the Murmansk region, which shares borders with Finland and Norway.

Since launching a full-scale invasion in Ukraine in February 2022, Moscow has accused “the collective West” of staging a proxy war with Russia and warned that Moscow will build up forces at its western borders following Finland’s accession to the US-led NATO alliance.

Earlier in December, Russia’s TASS state news agency reported that single Coalition-SV howitzers had already been deployed to the frontline in Ukraine.

The howitzers, with a range of up to 70 kilometres (44 miles), are equipped with a modern 2A88 cannon of 152 mm caliber with a firing rate of more than 10 rounds per minute, as well as a modern system for automating the processes of gun pointing, target selection and navigation, according to TASS.