Ukraine claims it destroyed Russian tank landing ship

Ukraine claimed on Tuesday to have carried out an airstrike in Crimea that destroyed a Russian Navy tank landing ship in what would be

Ukraine claimed on Tuesday to have carried out an airstrike in Crimea that destroyed a Russian Navy tank landing ship in what would be, if confirmed, the third instance of major losses of Russian military hardware in less than a week.

In a post on Telegram, Ukrainian Air Force commander Mykola Oleshchuk thanked personnel involved in “the destruction of the Novocherkask large landing ship” while it was in the port of Feodosia in Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula illegally annexed by Russia in 2014.

The Russian Defense Ministry said the Novocherkask had been “damaged” in a Ukrainian attack in a statement reported by the state-run TASS news agency.

The Russia-appointed head of Crimea, Sergey Aksyonov, earlier acknowledged via a statement that there had been “an enemy attack in [the] Feodosia area,” adding that “detonation has stopped and the fire has been localized.”

One person was killed and two injured in the Ukrainian strikes, Aksyonov said in an update on Telegram, though he did not mention the Novocherkask.