In the pre‑dawn dark over the Black Sea, Ukrainian Magura V5 sea drones swarmed a Russian missile corvette off occupied Crimea, striking it repeatedly near the waterline. Kyiv’s military intelligence published clear night‑vision footage of explosions ripping into the hull of the missile boat Ivanovets, a Tarantul‑class corvette that had helped enforce Moscow’s blockade of Ukrainian ports. Western naval analysts, reviewing the imagery and subsequent satellite shots, say the ship almost certainly sank.

Russia has not openly confirmed the loss, but its name quietly vanished from official fleet materials. Vessels of this class, equipped with anti‑ship missiles and advanced radar, carry a replacement price in the hundreds of millions of dollars when modernized — a painful blow to a Black Sea Fleet already battered by earlier strikes on the cruiser Moskva, landing ships and a submarine in dry dock.

Then came the shockwave. Within weeks, multiple Russian combatants were pulled back from forward bases in Sevastopol to the relative safety of Novorossiysk. Ukraine, exploiting the shrinking Russian surface presence, pushed ahead with a “grain corridor” along the western Black Sea, allowing more ships to sail from Odesa and nearby ports despite the war. Insurance premiums dipped, cargo volumes crept up — and Moscow’s image of naval dominance in the region took a visible hit.

For militaries worldwide, the message was chilling: a mid‑sized power, using relatively cheap, explosive drones and good intelligence, had forced a much larger navy to retreat from key waters. The surface war in the Black Sea, once ruled by big hulls and big missiles, is now being rewritten by small, unmanned craft with outsized strategic impact.