Russian military icebreaker damaged in unprecedented Baltic Sea drone strike, Ukraine claims
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Ukrainian forces have damaged a Russian military icebreaker in the Baltic Sea port of Vyborg amid a mass overnight attack, the General Staff reported on March 25.
The attack is the first known successful strike on Russian military ship in the Baltic Sea, almost 1,000 kilometers from Ukrainian territory.
The ship, identified by the General Staff as patrol icebreaker "Pruga," operated by the border guard wing of Russia's FSB secret police, was docked at the city's shipyard when it was hit, the General Staff said.
Photos purportedly taken the following day and posted on Telegram show a white ship keeled over on its side among other larger boats docked at the port.
According to the General Staff, the Pruga, belonging to a class of ships built at the shipyard known as Project 23550, is able to work both as an icebreaker and as a regular military warship.
According to Russian maritime media outlet Paluba, one such ship costs around 18 billion rubles ($222 million).
The strike came during a broader mass Ukrainian drone attack on Russian territory, with the country's defense ministry reporting 389 Ukrainian drones shot down over 13 Russian regions, as well as occupied Crimea.
Vyborg is a historic port city located in the north of Russia's Leningrad Oblast, annexed from Finland after the Second World War.
On top of the port, a residential building in the city center was also struck, according to Leningrad Oblast governor Alexandr Drozdenko.
Further south, one of Russia's largest gas terminals was also damaged in the port city of Ust-Luga, on the other side of the Gulf of Finland.
Since Russia's full-scale invasion, the country's Black Sea Fleet has come under repeated attack by Ukrainian forces, using a range of air and sea drones, as well as cruise missiles.
But with Ukraine conducting mass drone strikes deeper into Russian territory and with greater efficiency, Russia's Baltic Fleet, as well as the shadow fleet of oil tankers — two of which were damaged in a drone strike on Leningrad Oblast in September last year, could increasingly come into the crosshairs.
One Russian Baltic Fleet ship, the missile corvette Serpukhov, was allegedly damaged in April 2024, though the cause was an act of local sabotage, not a long-range strike.
