The Admiral Essen Is Burning: Ukraine Returns to Novorossiysk to Finish the Job

Twenty-eight days ago, Ukraine put the frigate Admiral Essen out of the missile business. On the night of September 8 to 9, it went back to Novorossiysk to take the ship off the board entirely. Ukraine's military intelligence service says the Kalibr carrier was hit again and left burning at its pier, and by Wednesday the General Staff had raised the count to at least three ships damaged, plus the port's fuel oil terminal. The Black Sea Fleet's last big anchorage is not a sanctuary anymore. It is a target set.

Neptune Finds the Admiral Essen, Again

The strike package came in overnight, and it was a family affair: HUR's Department of Active Operations ran the operation jointly with other Defense Forces components, hitting the naval base infrastructure and the frigate itself, per HUR statements carried by Interfax-Ukraine and ArmyInform. Direct hits started a fire on the Admiral Essen's deck superstructure. HUR did not offer a damage assessment, which is standard practice while the smoke is still up.

The Navy filled in the interesting part. Per ArmyInform, Ukraine's Naval Forces confirmed the Essen was struck by a Neptune anti-ship cruise missile, the same Luch-designed weapon family that opened its account on the cruiser Moskva in April 2022. President Zelensky confirmed the wider target list: an oil-shipping terminal, military harbor facilities, and warships, Kalibr launchers among them.

Photo: ArmyInform, CC BY 4.0

The Admiral Essen is a Project 11356 frigate, in service since 2016, one of three Admiral Grigorovich-class ships built for the Black Sea Fleet with vertical launch cells for Kalibr cruise missiles. Those cells are why Kyiv keeps coming back to it: the ship has been a recurring node in Russia's strike campaign against Ukrainian cities.

Three Ships and a Terminal: The Follow-Up Assessment

By midday September 10, the picture had widened. After analyzing additional intelligence, Ukraine's General Staff confirmed damage to at least three Black Sea Fleet vessels, per ArmyInform: the Admiral Essen, the minesweeper Zheleznyakov, and the large landing ship Petr Morgunov, a Project 11711 Ivan Gren-class ship commissioned in 2020 and moved into the Black Sea in early 2022, before the full-scale invasion sealed the straits. Fuel oil storage at the port was confirmed hit as well.

Photo: HUR via ArmyInform, CC BY 4.0

The terminal matters on its own. Militarnyi and Euromaidan Press identify it as Novorossiysk's fuel oil terminal, which handles roughly 4 million tonnes of product a year; at least one storage tank was damaged, and NASA FIRMS satellites picked up multiple heat sources across the port. Novorossiysk is Russia's largest seaport, and this is the second time in a month its energy infrastructure has burned.

The Russian side told two stories at once. The city's mayor spoke of falling debris at several enterprises. Krasnodar Krai Governor Veniamin Kondratyev, via TASS, reported four civilians killed and 29 injured, with a state of emergency declared and mourning announced in the city. Both things describe the same night.

The August Precedent: A Fleet With Nowhere Left to Park

None of this is a one-off. On August 12, Ukraine hit Novorossiysk with what Zelensky described as Palianytsia jet drones, Neptune missiles, and naval drones. Satellite imagery from Vantor, analyzed by Naval News, showed the Admiral Essen and its sister ship Admiral Makarov both damaged on their forward vertical launch cells, the part of the ship that actually shoots. Naval News assessed the damage as severe enough to disable the launchers for both surface-to-surface and surface-to-air work.

Photo: Mil.ru via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0

The economic shock arrived within 48 hours: Reuters reported the Sheskharis oil terminal, which loads roughly 700,000 barrels of crude a day, halted loading after the strike and a follow-on drone alert, with at least one tanker sailing empty. The channel covered that night in No Safe Harbor Left. September 9 reads as the sequel: same base, same ship, deeper damage.

Remember the arc here. Novorossiysk is where the Black Sea Fleet ran when Sevastopol became untenable in 2023. The fleet traded its purpose-built Crimean base for distance, and Ukraine has spent two years closing that distance with jet drones, cruise missiles, and unmanned surface vessels. Now the fallback port is under the same pressure as the one the fleet abandoned.

282 Ships: The Wider Squeeze

The night was bigger than one frigate. Unmanned Systems Forces commander Robert Brovdi reported that Russia lost several vessels including missile carriers, and that strikes near Anapa destroyed a Su-33 carrier-based fighter and an Mi-8 helicopter, per Militarnyi. The same reporting credits the 1st Separate UAS Center with destroying two radars near Gelendzhik: a 39N6 Kasta-2E2 surveillance radar and a 92N6 engagement radar from an S-300/S-400 battery. Those claims await independent confirmation, but the pattern, air defense first, ships second, is by now a signature.

Offshore, the shadow fleet campaign kept grinding. Ukrainian unmanned systems have hit 13 more tanker-and-freighter targets in the Black Sea this month, per Brovdi via Ukrainian shipping outlet USM, bringing the ledger to 282 vessels struck since Operation Molochka opened on July 6. Readers of our Azov Padlock brief will recognize the trajectory: 242 by late August, 282 now.

Why It Matters

Three reasons. First, magazine depth: every Kalibr cell that burns at a pier is a salvo that never reaches a Ukrainian substation, and winter is the season Moscow has already promised to spend on the grid. Second, the fleet's math: with the Moskva sunk, the Grigorovich frigates damaged, and now a big landing ship hit, Russia's Black Sea surface force is running out of ships that matter and ports that protect them. Third, the export angle: Novorossiysk is the pressure point where Russia's navy and its oil revenue share a fence line, and Ukraine keeps demonstrating it can reach both in the same sortie.

What to Watch

Satellite confirmation is the near-term tell: commercial imagery verified the August VLS damage within days, and the same will settle how badly the Essen and the Morgunov are hurt. Watch whether Sheskharis loading pauses again, and whether insurers start pricing Novorossiysk like a war port. And keep one eye on the retaliation track: HUR warned this week that Russia plans final tests of a new 800-kilometer ballistic missile before the end of 2026, per the Kyiv Independent, while Wednesday's drones killed one person in Kyiv and two more at the Starokozache border crossing, prompting Moldova to briefly close its airspace.

The fleet in the fallback port, the follow-up assessments, and whatever surfaces on satellite next: the channel will be tracking all of it at t.me/TheLeaflet, and the morning read lands here in The Daily Sitrep.

Read next: No Safe Harbor Left: Palianytsia, Neptune, and Sea Drones Hit Novorossiysk in One Night and The Sochi Drone Attack: Ukraine's Sea Drones Just Reached Putin's Riviera.

Want the recap in your inbox? The channel sends one Sitrep Digest email on the 1st of each month, the best of the morning briefs in a five minute read. Drop your email in the subscribe box at the bottom of this page.

Sources

HUR, Ukrainian Navy and General Staff statements via ArmyInform and Interfax-Ukraine; Kyiv Independent; Kyiv Post; Militarnyi; Euromaidan Press; Naval News; USM; Ukrainska Pravda; Reuters via Kyiv Independent; TASS (Russian official claims). Photos: HUR via ArmyInform (CC BY 4.0), ArmyInform (CC BY 4.0), Mil.ru via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0).