1/n Today I am please to release a new article on @tochnyi. We for very long worked on drone warfare and its impact on the war and its dynamics. Today we asked ourselves, what we can learn from the strikes in the sea of Azov.
What can NATO learn from Ukraineโs campaign against Russiaโs shadow fleet in the Sea of Azov?
๐ฐIn our latest article, @HartreeFock examines how Ukraine is reshaping maritime warfare and the lessons NATO should be paying attention to.
Read it here ๐
tochnyi.info/2026/08/sinkingโฆ
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2/n On 6โ7 July, Ukraineโs Unmanned Systems Forces launched drone operation against Russian shipping. This operation attacked both vessels of the "shadow fleet", but also ferries from Russia to Crimea, sinking up to 35 ships in only few weeks.
Magyar: Shadow fleet massacre continues.
๐ฅ 14 vessels hit overnight on July 9 in the Sea of Azov by the Birds of the Unmanned Systems Forces.
The wormsโ shadow fleet keeps shrinking: 35 tankers, cargo ships, and auxiliary vessels hit within the past 96 hours.
(Full timeline below)
Overnight, deep behind enemy lines in occupied Crimea and the southern occupied territories, the Birds of the Unmanned Systems Forces struck 45 military targets.
๐ฅ Among the wide range of targets across Crimea were the Saky Thermal Power Plant, three fuel storage sites, two logistics bases, a Zhitel electronic warfare station, communications towers, enemy transport and logistics hubs, fuel trucks, and 14 vessels from russiaโs shadow fleet โ 12 tankers, one cargo ship, and one tugboat. All were in the Sea of Azov.
Shadow fleet weight-loss timeline:
06.07.26 โ 2 tankers
โข Captain Barmin
โข Sanar-3 (Primemax class)
07.07.26 โ 10 vessels (8 tankers, 1 cargo ship, 1 ferry):
โข Venera-3
โข Sanar-1
โข Sanar-17
โข Klimena
โข Teti
โข Aleksey Savrasov
โข Penelopa
โข Ivan Cheremisinov
โข Cargo ship (name being confirmed)
โข SKS One ferry (Kerch)
08.07.26 โ 9 vessels:
โข Tanker Efrosinya V
โข Tanker Maria
โข Tanker Sanar-17 (hit again)
โข Tanker Sanar-4
โข Tanker Klimena (hit again)
โข Cargo ship Donstar
โข Cargo ship Vladimir Yarygin
โข Cargo ship Feofan Shokhirev
โข Cargo ship Evgeniya Z
09.07.26 โ 14 vessels (12 tankers, 1 cargo ship, 1 tugboat):
โข Tanker Chelsea-6 (russian flag)
โข Tanker Aura (russian flag)
โข Tanker Sonar-1 (russian flag)
โข Tanker Ilya Repin (russian flag)
โข Merkuriy (russian flag, vessel type being confirmed)
โข Tanker Galiaskar Kamal (Panamanian flag, under international sanctions)
โข Tugboat Alfeo (russian flag, towing the barge Aphrodite)
โข Tanker Venera-3 (russian flag)
โข Tanker Penelopa (russian flag)
โข The names of five additional vessels are being confirmed.
All identified tankers belong to russiaโs shadow fleet and are under international sanctions.
All strikes were coordinated by the newly established Deep Strike Center of the Unmanned Systems Forces.
Follow the USF results live:
โPIDRAKHUYKAโ online scoreboard
We will stand.
Moscow will fall.
Crimea will be fed back up and rebuilt.
MAGYAR ๐บ๐ฆ
09.07.26
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3/n This type of operation is not random but is a programmed campaign against Russian shadow fleet and therefore sanction evasion. However, it does not happen for luck or case. Instead is the results of a sustained campaign against Russian air defence assets.
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4/n With more than 600 assets attacked and many more facilities associated with air defence, Ukraine has opened its way to the Sea of Azov and by extension to the last lifeline to Crimea. Ukraine has hit AD asset in Crimea (138) and a similar number in Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia.
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5/n It is important do a step back and try to understand the implication of this. The Baltic states present a fundamentally different, but surprisingly analogous problem. If the Suwaลki corridor is contested, NATO reinforcement would depend heavily on maritime logistics.
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6/n Maritime logistics means moving enormous quantities of fuel, ammunition, vehicles, spare parts, food. All while under attack from air and potentially sea.
A NATO convoy in the Baltic could face the same fundamental problem as the Russian.
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7/n We already know that NATO has a gap in ships, especially when we need to move material, this has been covered recently and by itself is already an incredible challenge, considering the attrition rate that NATO could face. ukdefencejournal.org.uk/natoโฆ
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8/n Addressing this an several structural vulnerabilities requires NATO to adopt scalable alternatives. This is where NATOโs emerging Task Force X-Baltic concept becomes particularly interesting. In June 2025, NATO demonstrated more than 70 air, surface and subsurface uncrewed systems in the Baltic. act.nato.int/activities/tfx-โฆ
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9/n The lesson of the Sea of Azov is therefore not simply: โRussia failed to enforce drone dominance.โ In a drone-saturated battlespace, maritime logistics cannot be protected by few ships alone, an integrated solution is required.
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10/n NATO will need to rehearse the entire system before the war starts. The convoy of the 21st century may not be a line of ships surrounded by frigates.
It may be a distributed network of crewed and uncrewed platforms providing a moving defensive bubble around the logistics force.
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end/ I want to thank personally all the @tochnyi for their support and critical analysis of the work. You will find the full article here: tochnyi.info/2026/08/sinkingโฆ
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Hello! So there are some details. Surely we have see lot of movement of AD from eastern Russia, several Osinters are following this. To me this has two implications, 1st some of these are still in Russia, 2nd they have been moved to replace something that was sent to Ukraine. Now Russia, lost more than 70 Nebo radars for example. These are not cheap or easy to make. But we still seeing them destroyed therefore is clear that there is a combination of storage and production. The exact percentage is hard to determine because is hard to know what was in stock in first place. Finally we do not know the entire number of AD deployed so is virtually impossible to determine. What I can tell, is that we would not have been able to sustain these losses since for a number of reasons we do not have the stocks they have.
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This article discusses a very small portion of the entire picture of threats to maritime assets around Crimea and the ways Russia detects and defends them. Is there a reason you chose to concentrate on the Sea of Azov attacks as an analogy for what NATO needs to prepare for?
I would also be interested in the reason you believe this is the right question to ask? "The right question to ask therefore, is, how prepared is NATO to actually run that convoy?"
Aug 28, 2026 ยท 6:18 PM UTC
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