 Russia cannot protect its ships in Black Sea from Ukrainian attacks. Port of Sevastopol is emptied. The Crimean Deepwater Sevastopol Port is, according to Moscow rhetoric, critical to Russian national security and an inseparable piece of national naval strategy, but that's not where the Kremlin is keeping most of its Black Sea warships these days. This was stated by Kiev Post media outlet. It is noted that the last submarine of the most potent attack element of Russia's Black Sea fleet, formerly a six-boat flotilla of modern missile-carrying kilo-class submarines, set sail from Crimea's Sevastopol port, probably not to come back anytime soon. In Russia's worst naval defeat since the sinking of the Black Sea fleet's flagship, the cruiser Moskva in April 2022, a Ukrainian cruise missile strike, hitting Sevastopol's naval facility on September 13th, destroyed the Kilo-submarine Rostov-Nadano, tied up in dry dock, reducing the Black Sea fleet's fourth independent submarine brigade by one $300 million modern vessel. The raid carried out by high-tech British French storm-shadow missiles also struck and destroyed the Russian Navy's amphibious assault ship Minsk and demolished a massive empty dry dock as well. The long-term loss of the only three major dry docks available to the Black Sea fleet in the Black Sea has left Russian naval command with the unpleasant choice of either risking warships in action and no place to repair them if hit by the Ukrainians or keeping its large vessels well out of harm's way but unable to help out in the war against Kiev. Black Sea fleet naval command by September 17th, arguably demonstrated its decision by evacuation, along with all its missile submarines, all seven heavy assault Rapucha-class landing vessels out of Sevastopol's harbors, confined waters, Ukrainian Navy spokesman Dmitry Platenchuk said, The Black Sea fleet's Rapucha assault ship Flotilla, now reduced to seven vessels, is Russia's main means of launching amphibious assaults in the Black Sea basin. There was no official acknowledgement of the landing ship's departure or their destination but one day after they exited Sevastopol, US open-source analyst Tom Baik spotted three of the landing ships deployed defensively in the enclosed and closer to Russia waters of the Azov Sea. The wisdom of the Black Sea fleet command, decision to shift movable Russian naval assets in Crimea out of the reach of Ukrainian retaliation if it indeed was the case, was evident this week, with a pair of Ukrainian raids on September 20th, punishing Russian naval and naval support facilities in Crimea. According to Ukrainian official statements, cruise missiles, by many accounts, air-launched storm shadows, punched through some of the densest Russian air defenses anywhere to level a portion of the Black Sea fleet's field command center near the village Vrknosadov.