KYIV (Reuters) – Ukraine hit the Konstantin Olshansky landing ship, which Russia captured from Ukraine in 2014, with a missile, Ukrainian navy spokesperson Dmytro Pletenchuk said on Tuesday morning.
“Currently, this ship is not combat-capable,” Pletenchuk said on national television. There was no immediate comment from Russia.
Russia took the Konstantin Olshansky from Ukraine, along with most of Kyiv’s navy, when its troops occupied the Crimean peninsula in 2014.
“It had gone through a renovation and was being prepared for use against Ukraine, so unfortunately the decision was taken to strike this (ship),” Pletenchuk said.
He added that a Ukrainian-made Neptune anti-ship missile was used for this.
Ukraine, which still controls several hundred kilometres of Black Sea coastline despite Russian occupation of some of its southern regions, does not have any large warships.
However, it has conducted a series of successful strikes on Russia’s Black Sea fleet in recent months using missiles or seaborne drones.
Ukraine’s military claimed strikes on two other Russian landing ships in Crimea on Sunday.
(Reporting by Max Hunder; Editing by Kirsten Donovan and Philippa Fletcher)
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