Russian Warship Hit in Gulf of Finland: Naro-Fominsk Strike

Ukraine’s Security Service has claimed a drone strike on the Russian Baltic Fleet’s Project 21631 Buyan-M class small missile ship Naro-Fominsk near the island of Gogland in the Gulf of Finland, the first Ukrainian strike on a Baltic Fleet warship away from its base. Estonian Defence Minister Martin Herem stated that the ship was hit at about 5:30 local time on November 11, during the same overnight raid that set petroleum storage tanks alight at the port of Ust-Luga west of St Petersburg. The Finnish Defence Forces stated that they had detected a strike on a Russian warship in the Gulf of Finland area, while the Security Service stated that the vessel was carrying Kalibr and Oniks cruise missiles. The attack demonstrates that a cruise missile carrier more than 900 kilometres from Ukrainian territory, in waters long treated as Russia’s safest, is no longer beyond the reach of Kiev’s long range drones.

Gogland, known in Finnish as Suursaari, lies about 40 kilometres off the Finnish coast, and Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen stated that the Baltic remained stable and safe for civilian traffic. Herem said of the warship, “We know that smoke came from the ship afterwards,” adding that it “went back towards St Petersburg.” Moscow has made no statement on the Naro-Fominsk and the extent of any damage or casualties remains unknown, although Leningrad Region Governor Aleksandr Drozdenko reported 150 drones shot down over the region that night and three workers injured at Ust-Luga. The Security Service stated: “For the terror against Ukrainian cities and civilian infrastructure, Russia is receiving a response on its own territory.” The raid followed a strike on the Kirishi refinery only two days earlier, with the Leningrad region having become one of the most frequently targeted parts of Russia in the war in Ukraine.

The Naro-Fominsk was launched at the Zelenodolsk shipyard in December 2022 and entered service at the end of 2023, having originally been intended for the Black Sea Fleet before being reassigned to the Baltic. Displacing about 949 tonnes and measuring about 75 metres, the Buyan-M class was designed around an eight cell 3S14 vertical launch system for Kalibr cruise missiles, allowing a hull small enough to operate on rivers and inland seas to strike targets well over 1,000 kilometres away. Ships of the class have launched Kalibr strikes on Ukraine from both the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, which has made them priority targets for Kiev. Their self-defence armament of a 100 millimetre gun, a twin 30 millimetre close in weapon and short range Igla-S missiles was never designed with mass drone attacks in mind.

The strike is far from the first on the Baltic Fleet, with drones claimed by Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces having hit the Steregushchiy class corvette Boikiy during repairs at Kronstadt in early June. The November 11 raid also spilled into NATO airspace, with Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania warning citizens to take shelter and allied fighters scrambled, while Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry called Russian allegations that Kiev had used Baltic airspace for its attacks baseless. Herem stated that one Ukrainian drone briefly entered Estonian airspace from Latvia during the raid while NATO aircraft were airborne, but that shooting it down was not considered safe.