The Russian Frigate ‘Admiral Makarov’ Might Be The Juiciest Target In The Black Sea

After the dramatic sinking of the missile-cruiser Moskva by a Ukrainian missile battery on April 14, the Russian Black Sea Fleet is down to just three major surface combatants. The best and most important of them might be the new missile-frigate Admiral Makarov.

And that makes the 409-foot Admiral Makarov perhaps the most valuable target for Ukrainian missile crews and drone operators. We don’t know exactly how of its best Neptune anti-ship missiles the Ukrainian navy has left or whether Kyiv’s TB-2 drones are hunting for the Russian frigate or her Black Sea sisters.

In any event, it’s apparent Russian fleet commanders appreciate the danger. There’s evidence Admiral Makarov’s skipper has been taking pains to keep her away from the Ukrainian coast.

Distance could help to protect Admiral Makarov. But that same distance precludes the frigate from actually doing her job, protecting the Black Sea Fleet’s other vessels from air- and missile-attack.

Commissioned in 2017, Admiral Makarov is the third, last and most modern vessel in her class. All three of the Admiral Grigorovich-class frigates belong to the Black Sea Fleet. Armed with 24 Buk medium-range surface-to-air missiles and eight Kalibr cruise missiles, all in vertical cells, the frigates can escort other vessels and also attack targets on land.

Admiral Makarov and her sisters are not big ships. Displacing just 4,000 tons of water and accommodating 200 crew, they’re less than half the size of the U.S. Navy’s main surface combatants, the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers.

But the frigates are about as big as Russia can make a non-nuclear surface combatant these days, for reasons that—ironically—have everything to do with the current war. Throughout the Soviet era and for years after the USSR’s collapse, Russia acquired its big marine engines from Ukraine.

After Russia in 2014 invaded and annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula—including the port of Sevastopol where Admiral Makarov now is based—Kyiv barred certain exports to Russia, including the marine engines Russia requires for any fast, conventional vessel displacing more than 5,000 tons or so.

Which is to say, after 2014 the Russian navy struggled to build big warships. That made it impossible to replace, like for like, the biggest Soviet-vintage ships such as Moskva, which displaced 12,000 tons.

Moskva was the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet. She was old and hadn’t gotten a lot of major updates through her long service beginning in 1983. But she was stacked with missiles: 16 Vulkan anti-ship missiles, 64 S-300 long-range surface-to-air missiles and 40 Osa missiles for short-range air-defense.

All those missiles couldn’t save Moskva when a Ukrainian battery on land, perhaps near the strategic port of Odessa, put two Neptune missiles in her port side. She burned, then sank while under tow, taking with her potentially scores of her 500 sailors.

Moskva’s sinking, along with the earlier destruction of the Black Sea Fleet landing ship Saratov following an apparent hit by a Ukrainian ballistic missile, spooked fleet commanders. They pulled back the surviving surface ships.

Many, including one Admiral Grigorovich-class frigate—it’s not clear which—were moored in Sevastopol as recently as Thursday. When the warships do sail from Crimea, they tend to stay 100 miles or so from the Ukrainian coast, potentially keeping them beyond the range of Kyiv’s Neptunes.

Keeping at a safe distance meant the frigates apparently were in no position to help when the Ukrainian navy last week mounted a furious drone assault on the Russian garrison on Snake Island. The tiny hunk of rock, 25 miles off the coast of southwestern Ukraine, helped Kyiv assert some control over the western Black Sea—until the Russians captured it on the first full day of the current war on Feb. 24.

Ukrainian TB-2 drones knocked out Russian air-defenses on the island then went hunting deeper at sea. On Monday, a TB-2 struck two Russian Raptor-class patrol boats with laser-guided missiles, heavily damaging if not destroying both of the 55-foot boats as they motored toward Snake Island.

Without the protection of a frigate, the Raptors were sitting ducks. In that sense, sinking Moskva—and scaring off the rest of the Black Sea Fleet’s major combatants—was as good as sinking the frigates, too. It doesn’t matter that Russia still has three powerful warships in the Black Sea if those ships can’t, or won’t, risk approaching the Ukrainian coast.

Still, the Ukrainians undoubtedly would love to get a shot at Admiral Makarov and her sisters. On Thursday there were rumors they’d landed a blow with a Neptune and the frigate was on fire. There was no immediate evidence to back up the rumors.

Admiral Makarov apparently still sails. But not in harm’s way.