URZUF, Ukraine — As dawn broke on Oct. 9, Ukrainian radar batteries along the shores of the Azov Sea reported unusually intense Russian military activity at an enemy shore base.
According to the reports, Russian marine forces were starting to board amphibious troop carriers in the Russian port of Yeysk, less than 70 kilometers southeast of the fortress Azov Sea port city of Mariupol, with nearly 500,000 people some 800 kilometers southeast of Kyiv.
Worse news came after just a few minutes.
From all along the 400-kilometer frontline in the Donbas, Ukrainian army units started reporting unusually fierce attacks by Russian-led forces.
The situation deteriorated rapidly. Very soon, a fleet of Russian troop carriers, accompanied by missile boats, was detected crossing the narrow sea strait, headed for the Ukrainian coast.
Ukrainian commanders ordered two of the navy’s UMC‑1000 patrol boats on a nearly suicidal mission: Hold the Russians back for as long as possible, to give the army time to deploy its troops to defend the coast.
Ukrainian commanders’ worst fears were being realized: It was an all-out Russian blitzkrieg, and the Azov Sea was the theater of war.
Fortunately, it was all just a war game.
The above scenario was used as the basis for joint maneuvers held by the Ukrainian military on Oct. 9 and Oct.12 on a section of the coast close to Mariupol, some 620 kilometers southeast of Kyiv. But while Ukrainian forces were only practicing this time, this or a similar scenario could easily happen for real, Ukrainian commanders say.
Over the past few months, Moscow’s pressure on Ukraine has switched from its stalled land campaign in the Donbas to the Azov Sea, where Russia has greatly enhanced its military power. The Kremlin now effectively has control over the sea.
In response, Ukraine is now taking its first belated steps to resurrect its own fleet in the Azov. At the same time, it has launched some of its biggest and most intense drills to prepare its military to meet an enemy amphibious assault with all guns blazing.
Outgunned
Having opened the bridge over the Kerch Strait between the mainland Russia and Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Crimea in May, Russia started treating the Azov Sea as its own lake, harassing and impeding merchant shipping from the major Ukrainian ports of Mariupol and Berdyansk.
In recent months it has also redeployed at least 40 navy vessels to the region, including amphibious assault carriers, artillery gunboats, and missile warships armed with Kalibr cruise missiles — which Russia launched from the Caspian Sea to carry out devastating strikes on Syria.
And according to Ukrainian Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak, Russia recently added to its Azov flotilla at least five corvettes armed with Iskander cruise missiles.
Moscow’s military buildup left Ukraine’s Azov Sea coast looking dangerously vulnerable. Other than a handful of old patrol boats at coastal defense outposts in Mariupol and Berdyansk, Ukraine had no other forces in the area.
Only in autumn, when the media started to report on the perilous situation, did Ukraine’s leadership started redeploying the first several small combat craft overland to the Azov Sea.
In September, two new armored gunboats were sent to Berdyansk. Then two more craft, the tugboat Korets and search and rescue ship Donbas, entered the Azov Sea via the Russian-controlled Kerch Strait — the first Ukrainian navy ships to do so since Russia invaded and started to occupy Crimea in early 2014.
Together with two U.S.-produced Island-class boats, which were officially handed over to Ukraine on Sept. 27, those craft are to form the core of a new Ukrainian naval force, based in Berdyansk, that the government has vowed to set up by the end of 2018.
Worst-case scenario
The sea is only the first line of Ukraine’s defense — in the event of a Russian attack, the heaviest fighting would occur on the landing grounds.
Ukraine’s military believes the Kremlin may still hope to gain a land corridor from mainland Russia to Crimea by capturing the Ukrainian cities of Mariupol, Berdyansk, and Melitopol along the northwestern coastline of the Azov Sea.
This would help Russian resolve dire problems in supplying water and electricity to the occupied peninsula — but it would also involve an amphibious assault similar to the one gamed against by the Ukrainian army during its Oct. 9 drills.
During the drills, the mock battle against the imaginary Russian troop carriers went well.
The two Ukrainian UMC‑1000 boats immediately went into action against the enemy, and managed to severely damage one of the hostile vessels.
Every gained minute was precious; as the sea battle unfolded, Ukrainian mine planters started laying dense minefields along the beach. Then the thunder of jet engines shook the sky: Ukrainian Su‑25 ground-attack aircraft launched air strikes on simulated moving targets at sea, their rockets raising high white water plumes.
With the enemy drawing closer, a pair of Ukrainian Mi‑24 strike helicopters also flew over the beach side by side, firing a swarm of rockets at the approaching imaginary troop carriers.
“This is how a Russian amphibious attack would unfold,” Lieutenant General Serhiy Nayev, the top commander of all Ukrainian troops deployed to the Donbas war zone as part of the so-called Joint Forces Operation (JFO), told the Kyiv Post during the maneuvers.
“In total, there are approximately 10 locations in the JFO area that are vulnerable to Russian seaborne landings. All of these areas are being very closely studied, and whole sets of troop obstacles have been installed there. In the nearest future, we also plan to reinforce and expand the obstacles (to include minefields, and so on) to ensure we have all available capabilities to repel amphibious assaults.”
Shore battle
Back at the drills, the simulated Russian attack had not been thwarted by the airstrikes.
Ukrainian reconnaissance units observing the sea battle from small, entrenched observation posts shouted into their radio sets that many of the enemy vessels had made it to shore and started landing hostile troops. Very soon, the simulated Russian marines would advance deeper into Ukrainian territory to take key Ukrainian defense points prior to the arrival of their main forces.
The situation was deteriorating for the Ukrainian side with every minute.
“During these drills, we intentionally opted to work on a worst-case scenario, in which the Russian attacking forces break through our sea defenses,” said Lieutenant General Nayev as he watched, through high-powered binoculars, his troops maneuvering on the bare steppe land next to the coast.
“Now the simulated enemy is consolidating and securing a bridgehead on the shore.”
“But we have prepared a small surprise for them.”
A massive cannonade roars from somewhere beyond a line of trees far to the rear, and heavy shell bursts started cratering the contested shore, flinging earth up into the air, and raising dense clouds of gray, pungent smoke. Batteries of Ukrainian 152-millimeter artillery howitzers had entered the fray.
The coastguard craft and air force had won enough time for Ukraine’s ground forces to reach the battlefield and meet the enemy on the shore.
The landing beach turned into an inferno, caught in intense crossfire from Ukrainian tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and heavy machine guns, and relentlessly pounded by heavy artillery.
Soon, a crescent of counter-attacking Ukrainian forces started to close gradually on the attackers, all the while subjecting them to a hail of fire. Then a squad of Ukrainian infantrymen stationed on a hill overlooking the beach reported that the attackers had been thrown back into the sea, and that the few surviving hostile troops could be taken captive.
“In actual combat, we would know that Russians were launching a seaborne invasion as soon as their troops start boarding their troop carriers,” said Colonel Oleksandr Domanskiy, the deputy commander of the JFO. “After that, the main ground troops would take up to one hour to land on Ukrainian soil. Today’s drills showed that our forces are potent enough to consolidate and fight off a Russian amphibious assault.
The exercise scenario, however, did not include massive initial Russian air strikes on Ukrainian defenses — which would almost certainly precede an all-out marine assault on the Ukrainian coast.
According to Ukraine’s military command, the country’s anti-aircraft defenses in southern Donetsk Oblast cover areas with radii of at least 75 kilometers, meaning Russia’s airfields on the southern coast of the Azov Sea are within their range.
No land to lose
Just three days later, on Oct. 12, the war game was replayed again on an even more massive scale, this time under the command of Ukraine’s Naval Forces and involving of at least 600 troops and over 150 armored vehicles.
By the end of the year, according to JFO commander Lieutenant General Nayev, there will be another series of large-scale maneuvers for air, ground, and sea forces to practice defending against a Russian amphibious assault in the Azov Sea.
“We don’t have any choice but to train our troops really hard for this type of warfare, and challenge Russia’s actions in the sea,” said Ukraine’s top naval commander, Admiral Ihor Voronchenko, during the Oct. 12 drills.
“Once a Russian amphibious force lands on our beaches, we have nowhere to retreat to.”
