Russia’s main naval base in the region was targeted, but the damage isn’t clear. Kyiv, for the past week, has launched massed drone strikes mostly at Russian air defense systems and airfields

May 7, 2025

Wave-hugging Ukrainian Neptune cruise missiles attacked the Russian naval port of Novorossiysk late on Tuesday, in the latest of more than a week of ambitious and sometimes punishing strikes against military targets in the central and eastern Black Sea region.

Russian official sources reported that a shore battery or batteries based in Ukraine’s Odesa region launched missiles initially flying south and passing west of the Crimea peninsula and then executing a dogleg turn to the east to take aim at the main base of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet (BSF).

The five-weapon R-360 Neptune missile (Ukrainian: Р-360 «Нептун») attack covering 750+ kilometers (466+ miles) from launch to target, per open sources, was, by distance, probably the longest-ranged conventional missile strike yet conducted by Ukraine’s military since Russia’s February 2022 invasion.

A domestically developed cruise missile, the Neptune originally was designed with an operational range of 350-400 kilometers (217-249 miles), but in May 2025, Ukraine’s government announced it had designed and was fielding a longer-ranged version. In April 2022, in Ukraine’s biggest naval success to date, two Neptunes hit and sank the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, an air defense cruiser named Moskva. 

Novorossiysk officials claimed local air defenses, in engagements starting at about 9:30 p.m., shot down all the Ukrainian missiles and that there was no damage. Some Russian milbloggers reported that one Neptune had gotten through, others said one Ukrainian missile was shot down. Social media posters in the Crimean resort city of Yalta claimed missile sightings offshore and explosions. 

Russian air force commanders during the Ukrainian strike reportedly launched fighters from the military airfields of Belbek and Saky. Local authorities issued an air raid warning across the Crimea peninsula and ordered civilian traffic moving across the Kerch Bridge connecting Crimea to Russia’s Krasnodar region halted. Air traffic to the seaside resort city of Sochi, on the Russian mainland, was grounded as well.

Russia’s Defense Ministry, on Wednesday morning, confirmed an attempted Ukrainian Neptune missile attack on Novorossiysk overnight without offering detailed information. Official Ukrainian sources by midday Wednesday had not commented on the strike or its effectiveness.

Overnight Tuesday-Wednesday, Ukraine launched 447 drones or missiles at targets across Russia or in Russian-occupied territory – in Kyiv’s biggest long-range bombardment attack of the entire war – Ukraine’s UNIAN news agency reported. The only missiles used in those attacks hitting up to 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) inside Russia were the Neptunes targeting Novorossiysk, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

Russian forces overnight fired four ballistic missiles and 142 drones at targets across Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a Wednesday statement.

A by-design civilian shipping port located on Russia’s Black Sea shore, Novorossiysk became the BSF’s main operational base in late 2023 after Ukrainian missile strikes forced the BSF to evacuate its historical Black Sea naval base since the early 9th century, the Crimea port city of Sevastopol. The Russian navy lost at least four major warships, one of them a guided missile submarine tied up at a wharf, to Ukrainian missile hits before the BSF abandoned the port.

At the time of the Ukrainian strike on Tuesday evening, most, but not all of the some two dozen Russian warships based in Novorossiysk were at sea, a Tuesday Ukrainian navy official statement said.

The Tuesday missile attack came on the heels of a furious air-sea battle on Sunday in and above waters to the west of Novorossiysk, pitting conventional Russian combat aircraft and manned coastal cutters against a flotilla of Ukrainian Magura 7 robot boats.

In that action, at least eight and possibly as many as 14 SUV-sized Ukrainian remote-controlled boats heading east at high speeds were observed and then attacked by Russian air and sea forces.

Two advanced Russian Su-30CM fighter-bombers attacking the Ukrainian speed boats were shot down by US-made air-to-air missiles converted to shipboard air defense weapons by Ukrainian technicians, a Monday statement by Ukraine’s national military intelligence agency HUR said.

Official Russian sources claimed all the Ukrainian boats were destroyed. Video made public by the Russian military showed at least four Maguras hit by fire and exploding. In some images, Russian coast guardsmen aboard a cutter are shown firing heavy machine guns and even an anti-tank rocket in an attempt to defend themselves from a robot boat that appeared to be attempting to ram the Russian vessel from the stern.

One day before that sea battle, on Saturday, a massive 170+ Ukrainian drone raid attacked targets around Novorossiysk and the city of Rostov on the Russian mainland, and the strikes were confirmed against the seaside towns of Kerch, Feodosia, and Anapa in the Russia-occupied Crimea peninsula.

Civilian-sourced video and local news reports confirmed drone hits, explosions, and fires at an oil processing plant in the town of Taman near Rostov and in the vicinity of a military airfield adjacent to Anapa. One drone, possibly hit by Russia’s anti-aircraft fire, struck an apartment building in Novorossiysk, injuring four civilians.

The day before that, on Friday, the Ukrainian military intelligence group HUR claimed its operatives, working with a long-range strike unit called 14th Unmanned Aircraft Brigade, had recently hit and destroyed multiple Russian air defense systems deployed in Crimea, including – per that statement and video published with it – an S-300V air defense missile launchers, an Obzor-3 radar, a Kasta-2E2 radar, an ST-68 radar, and an Imbir radar. Russian official sources reported repeated attacks against air defense systems in the region but claimed no significant damage.

Overnight Thursday-Friday, a massed 150+ Ukrainian drone attack struck across Crimea with sightings or explosions reported in the towns and villages of Kacha, Yevpatoriya, Dzhankoy, Belkbek, Novofederivka, Armyansk, Inkerman, Ukgolve, Andreyivka and Vilino. Saky and Gvardeyske airfields reportedly also were hit, as well as a top-secret military intelligence electronic listening post called unit 33443, in Russia’s western Stavropol region.

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/52196