Ukraine Hit 105 Ships in Eight Days. Russia Just Closed the Sea of Azov.

A functioning naval blockade now sits across Russia's inland sea, imposed by a country without a major warship. The instruments: strike drones with 370 kilometers of reach, robot boats, and a machine-gun robot that drove onto an occupied beach.

What happened

Russia suspended shipping across the Sea of Azov after Ukrainian drones targeted 90 vessels in less than a week, including the shadow-fleet tankers that carry its sanctioned oil, the Guardian reported on July 12. The closure had been building for days. Reuters, cited by the Kyiv Independent, reported that Russian border guards stopped accepting applications for passage through the Kerch Strait at 6:10 p.m. on July 10 and that navigation on the Don-Azov Canal, the waterway linking the Don River to the sea, was halted the same day. The notice gave no date for reopening.

By Monday the campaign had a fuller ledger. Ukrainian drones hit 15 more vessels overnight, seven tankers, five dry cargo ships, a ferry and two tugboats, bringing the total to 105 vessels struck between July 6 and July 13, according to Robert Brovdi, the commander of Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces. Ukraine's General Staff confirmed the strikes in its daily update, Kyiv Post reported. "Fifteen vessels overnight, 105 vessels in eight days were taken out by USF Birds," Brovdi wrote on Telegram. "Operation MoLoChKa will continue until the Russian shadow fleet is listed in the Red Book of the Sea of Azov."

These are Ukrainian claims, and the Kyiv Independent noted it could not independently verify them. The physical evidence, though, keeps surfacing on the Russian side. Vantor satellite imagery showed a tanker burning near the Kerch Bridge on July 8, per the War Zone. Rostov governor Yuri Slyusar said a drone struck a tanker entering the Azov-Black Sea Canal, adding the vessel was empty and the fire contained, the Moscow Times reported. What shut the sea was not a fleet. Ukraine does not operate a single major warship. The blockade runs on propeller-driven aircraft and robot boats, and that is the part the world's navies now have to price.