The world’s third most powerful maritime force the Russian Navy kicked off a massive training exercise called “July Storm” on Wednesday. Its warships deployed into the Pacific Ocean and the Barents, Caspian and Baltic Seas for what is billed as realistic, multi-spectral battle drills spanning 13 time zones.
But in the Black Sea – the only place where Moscow is actually fighting a naval war – the surface ships and submarines of Russia’s once-mighty Black Sea Fleet (BSF) are staying firmly tied up at moorings in the port Novorossiysk, where last night they sat passively as Ukrainian long-range drones pounded shore targets further up the coast.
Russia’s Defense Ministry in a press release on Thursday proudly and even breathlessly detailed Moscow’s naval might and global reach as the Pacific Fleet corvette “Gremyashchiy” launched a single anti-submarine missile at an underwater training target, near Vladivostok where patrol boats alongside Mi-8 and Ka-27PS naval helicopters practiced submarine hunting and “anti-terror activities.” A squadron of missile boats sailed 50 kilometers (30 miles) into the Caspian and simulated the launching of their weaponry.
At the other end of Russia, troops in the east Baltic ran through surface target engagement exercises and fired off ammunition. In the icy reaches of the Barents Sea Russian strike aircraft simulated a NATO air strike against the Northern Fleet’s main base of Severomorsk – which, according to the official statement, was “successfully repelled” by Northern Fleet warships.
Where is the Black Sea Fleet?
The last confirmed movement to sea by a Black Sea Fleet major warship, in contrast, took place 48 hours earlier, on Monday. According to a Ukrainian military statement a single Russian submarine, the diesel-electric boat Varshavyanka, exited the Novorossiysk harbor at 2:15 am, sailed a short distance offshore, and from a safe location launched a salvo of four Kaliber cruise missiles as part of a Russian overnight massed bombardment of Ukraine.
Ukraine’s Air Force said later that day that, while some Russian weapons fired from other locations penetrated national air defenses, all of the cruise missiles from the Varshavyank were shot down.
On Wednesday, without reported interference from the Russian navy, waves of Ukrainian drones crossed the Black Sea to hit targets on the Russia-occupied Crimea peninsula and the Azov Sea port city of Rostov where kamikaze drones hit railroad infrastructure, a heating plant and a telephone exchange. Novorossiysk remained quiet.
Overnight Wednesday-Thursday, long-range Ukrainian Lyutyi AN-196 attack drones hit the Russia’s eastern Black Sea shore resort cities of Adler and Sochi. According to news reports these probably targeted oil and gas infrastructure and an airport.
Social media in Novorossiysk complained that Ukrainian drones had passed over Russia’s Krasnodar region seemingly without interference, while official sources said all the drones were shot down – but no engagements involving Black Sea warships were by either Russian or Ukrainian sources.
Ukrainian long-range missiles and drone strikes forced the Black Sea Fleet to abandon the naval base Sevastopol that had been occupied since the late 1700s, following Ukrainian missile strikes that blew up a submarine, sank a landing assault ship and demolished its headquarters during a meeting attended by many of the fleet’s senior officers.
Estimates sat that the Fleet has lost about half its strength in terms of total warship tonnage, and between 30-35 percent of its original 74 warships.
In 2025 the Kremlin appears to have virtually given up on any attempt to assert its naval power in the Black Sea. July 13 Maxar satellite images of Novorossisyk published by the OSINT researcher MTAnderson three days later, showed 29 of the 33 ships known to be operated by Fleet, tied up at wharves, with little visible crew activity and no evidence of recent movement.
The last reported flotilla-sized movement of its warships, 11 vessels, took place in June 2024, when the Russian admiralty ordered ships to re-deploy into the Sea of Azov in a failed attempt to find a viable place other than Novorossiysk to base those warships forced to evacuate Sevastopol.
The most recent confirmed Ukrainian strike against Novorossiysk took place on July 6 with an attack on the port by air and sea drones that Russian shore defenses repelled.
Ukraine’s main intelligence directorate, HUR, on July 2 took credit for a Crimea car bombing that killed Vice Admiral Ildar Akhmetov, the Black Sea Fleet commander. On May 3 HUR and navy operators claimed a world’s first after a sea drone approaching Novorossiysk port and armed with an anti-aircraft missile shot down a $50 million Russian Su-30 fighter sent to attack the Ukrainian unmanned vessels.
Speaking to Ukrainian television on Friday, navy spokesman Dmitro Pletenchuk said there are no more combat-ready Russian military vessels left in Crimea, and that as a war-fighting organization Russia’s Black Sea Fleet has given up on sending major warships into the Black Sea.
“Now the enemy mainly uses boats… mainly for patrolling and anti-sabotage defense,” Pletenchuk said. “Anything they have left in Crimea… is broken… they have [ship-launched cruise] missiles [on Novorossiysk-based ships] so they can go out of port and launch them, but that’s all. But deep into the Black Sea, they can’t do that any longer.”
The Russian Navy’s July Storm exercises will reportedly run from July 23-27 and involve more than 150 vessels and 15,000 military personnel.. The main training objectives are improving fleet readiness and war-fighting capacity. More than 120 aircraft and 10 coastal missile systems also will participate, all commanded by Russian Navy chief, Admiral Aleksandr Moiseev, Kremlin statements said.