Ukrainian general: in 2018 Ukrainian navy boats came very close to Russian port of Yeysk
In the autumn of 2018, armored boats from the Ukrainian Navy were able to secretly advance to within a mile and a half of the Russian port in Yeysk, said former commander of the Ukrainian Joint Forces Operation (JFO) in the Donbas, Lieutenant-General Serhiy Nayev, in an interview with TSN.
“At one point, the naval ships approached within a mile and a half of a Russian port,” he said, adding that the Russian military was caught off guard and was late to respond. One international nautical mile is equal to 1,852 meters.
“The response was delayed by 2:00 (the general did not specify whether it was a question of hours or minutes). These are Ukrainian Navy ships, small armored boats that operate as part of the Joint Forces,” he added, noting that the incident occurred in October last year in Yeysk.
According to Nayev, the Ukrainian Navy also managed to create conditions under which Russian ships were unable to approach “past a certain point”.
The general also said that the Russian FSB does not conduct inspections aboard Ukrainian ships because the Ukrainian army “does not let it.” “Border service ships were called, other military measures were taken, and the enemy ships departed from our ships. There were two cases when they tried to inspect the Ukrainian ships, but after that the attempts stopped, ” said Nayev. “Not a single FSB officer has gone on board a Ukrainian ship,” he stressed.
Lieutenant-General Serhiy Nayev has led the operations of the Ukrainian Joint Armed Forces in the Donbas since March 2018. A year later, in March 2019, the president of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, appointed Lieutenant General Oleksandr Syrsky as the new JFO commander.