Unusual incident took place in late February 2024 with two russian vessels, Sparta-IV and YAZ, which regularly carry military cargo between Syria and russia. When they had just approached the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits on their way into the Black Sea, both suddenly turned around and went back toward Syria. From that point on, they are expected to try and reach the russian shore via a roundabout route through the Baltic.
Naval News analyst H I Sutton suggests that the reason for such behavior was the increasing danger to russian ships posed by Ukrainian unmanned surface vessels, or simply maritime attack drones.
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The expert adds that a similar sequence of events happened with another russian ship named Ursa Major, also a military supplies carrier: it was supposed to depart for the Black Sea but decided to take a stop in a Turkish port.
According to H I Sutton, this wariness highlights the strategic impact that Ukrainian drones have brought into the sea domain since their introduction back in September 2022. This episode showcases that the Black Sea Fleet of russia is no longer in full control of its area of responsibility and incapable of ensuring safety of its logistic supply lines. This impact is no less important in the bigger picture than the successful attack missions against the russian warships.
Notably, the last one of those, resulting in the Sergey Kotov patrol ship sinking, took place after the described abnormal behavior by the cargo vessels.
The analyst also recalled one more illustrative case, it happened just a few hours before the swarm drone attack on Sergey Kotov. A russian civilian vessel Ella while cruising 160 km from the coast of russian-occupied Crimea, notified that it had encountered four drones in the open sea which became visible on radars only when at a distance of 2 nautical miles (3.7 km) from the merchant ship. This detail demonstrates how difficult the Ukrainian maritime drones are to spot.
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