Home › Opinion › What the Black Sea strikes showed by 9 November 2023
What the Black Sea strikes showed by 9 November 2023
Summary
A look back at a week of attacks on ports, ships and shipyards along Ukraine's southern coast.
What did the southern front look like on 9 November 2023? The preceding days offered a picture of a war fought as much around ports and ships as along the front line.
The week began on 3 November with a Russian missile strike that killed more than 20 Ukrainian soldiers at an awards ceremony near the front line in Zaporizhzhia Oblast. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the incident could have been avoided, and the losses prompted anger.
On 4 November, Ukrainian forces struck the Zalyv Shipbuilding yard in Russian-occupied Kerch, Crimea, with cruise missiles. The attack damaged the Russian corvette Askold.
Odesa was hit on 6 November, when Russian drones and missiles injured at least eight people and damaged infrastructure, including the Odesa Fine Arts Museum.
The following day brought a further blow at sea. On 8 November, a Russian missile struck a Liberian-flagged vessel entering the Pivdennyi Port in Odesa Oblast. One crew member was killed and four were injured. The ship was being used to transport iron ore to China.
A pattern, not a single event
Taken together, the reports from 3 to 8 November show strikes landing on military gatherings, a shipyard, a city's cultural and civilian infrastructure, and a merchant vessel bound up with trade. Each side hit targets tied to the sea, and the attack on a foreign-flagged ship put a crew from outside the combatants at risk.
As 9 November arrived, the sequence stood as the most recent account of the fighting in the south: losses and public anger on one side, a damaged warship on the other, and a port city and a commercial vessel under fire.
