Ukraine Launches Massive Drone Strike on Kronstadt Naval Base; Guided-Missile Corvette Hit
Ukraine launched a massive overnight drone strike on Russia’s Kronstadt naval base and hit a guided-missile corvette, in Ukraine’s most significant naval-targeted deep-strike of the war. The strike came as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky declared it was time to end the war. The strike followed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Friday rejection of Zelensky’s face-to-face meeting offer; the operational signal is that Ukraine will keep pressure on high-prestige Russian targets even as the diplomatic track has closed. The strike is the second wave of the Ukrainian deep-strike campaign timed to the St Petersburg International Economic Forum.
Kronstadt is the historic naval base of the Russian Baltic Fleet, located on the island of Kotlin near St Petersburg. A successful Ukrainian drone strike on a guided-missile corvette at Kronstadt represents a major escalation in the Ukrainian naval-targeting campaign and a significant tactical setback for the Baltic Fleet. The strike caps the Ukrainian SPIEF-week campaign: Tuesday-Wednesday St Petersburg oil terminal, Saturday morning St Petersburg residents staying indoors, Saturday overnight Kronstadt naval base. The pattern indicates Ukrainian intelligence-led targeting of Russian state-prestige assets during the Kremlin’s flagship economic-diplomatic event. Putin met former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder at SPIEF; Schroder has remained the principal European political ally of the Kremlin since the start of the war.