Following Tsiklon missile ship sinking, several Russian warships flee from Crimea - army spox

Dmytro Pletenchuk, head of the Center for Strategic Communications at Defense Forces South, announced this on the air of the national telethon, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"Missile carriers firmly stick to their bases. Several ships left Crimea in the past few days after the sinking of the Tsiklon ship. More and more, the enemy realizes that Crimea is not the place where they can base their warships," Pletenchuk said.

He added said that as of now, there are no missile carriers in the Black Sea and that the situation remains stable.

"Unfortunately, as far as the merchant fleet is concerned, Russia is highly active. In violation of all international rules, with the identification system turned off, they periodically check into our ports occupied by Russia. This is Mariupol and Berdiansk. From there, they take out the loot and transship it toward their ports both on the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea. Then the Russians try to resell that somewhere for export, falsifying paperwork as if these are products are of their own production," Pletenchuk said.

He added that the enemy controls the water area at the expense of aviation "because the warship-cutter fleet remains at the base points, but taking advantage of the fact that they occupied almost the entire coast of the Sea of Azov, they pursue their illegal actions."

As Ukrinform reported earlier, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces confirmed the sinking of the Russian missile ship, Tsiklon, in the temporarily occupied Crimea on May 19.