This week’s attack marked the first time Ukraine has attacked a Russian warship in the Baltic Sea—and could make NATO nations nervous.

Since the spring of 2022, Ukraine has aggressively targeted Russian vessels in missile and drone attacks in the Black Sea along its southern coast. In April 2022, it sank the guided missile frigate Moskva, the Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet flagship, in a high-profile incident that shocked naval warfare experts around the world. The Moskva was the largest Russian warship lost in combat since World War II, and the first Russian Navy flagship to be lost since the Russo-Japanese War in 1905.

In the years since, Ukraine has continued targeting other warships in the Black Sea, and to a lesser extent elsewhere in the world. The 1936 Montreux Convention allows Turkey to prevent Russia from bringing warships from its other fleets into the Black Sea during a time of war—meaning that any warship stationed outside the Black Sea in February 2022 cannot enter the war, making them irrelevant to Ukraine’s immediate security concerns. Even so, Kyiv has periodically attempted to strike other vessels as opportunities arise—as a way of inflicting pain on Russia, reducing its broader military readiness, and diverting resources in a future rearmament away from the Black Sea.

One such opportunistic attack took place this week, when Ukraine attacked a Russian warship in the Baltic Sea, approximately 1,180 miles (1,898 km) from Ukrainian territory. Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) struck the Russian Navy’s Buyan-M-class missile corvette Naro-Fominsk with a drone in the Gulf of Finland on Wednesday, roughly 28 miles (45 km) from the Finnish coast—prompting the warship to cancel a planned deployment and turn back toward St. Petersburg for repairs.

The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) was one of the waves of drones launched near Russia’s northwest Leningrad region, striking an oil terminal in the Kirovsky District and sparking a major fire at the Ust-Luga port terminal.

It wasn’t the first time that Kyiv had conducted such a strike in the region. Last month, more than 100 long-range drones, including the Ukrainian-made FP-1, targeted St. Petersburg in an attempt to cause economic damage to the Russian economy. Four months earlier, in June, Ukraine launched another attack on the city intended to coincide with the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. That attack temporarily shut down Pulkovo Airport and restricted mobile Internet across parts of the city; it may have also frightened the foreign investors the Kremlin had sought to court at the forum.

Russia has not confirmed the extent of the damage to the Naro-Fominsk, or indicated if there were casualties on board.

Russia Has Understood the Danger of Ukrainian Baltic Attacks for Years

Although this is the first publicly confirmed Ukrainian attack on a Russian warship in the Baltic, it seems that Moscow was aware of the possibility for some time.

The recurring threat of drone strikes in the Leningrad Oblast has resulted in Russia canceling its traditional July “Navy Day” parade in St. Petersburg harbor for two years running, first in 2025 and again this year. The Russian Navy last held the naval review in 2024; even then, it was a scaled-down affair due to security concerns, featuring just 20 surface ships, four sailing craft, and a submarine. Ironically, one of those ships was the Naro-Fominsk.

The Kremlin may have opted not to risk putting its warships in the crosshairs with a parade, but this week’s strikes highlighted that even at sea, elements of the Baltic Fleet might not be safe. The strike on the Russian Navy corvette came as Russian and Ukrainian delegations met in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates (UAB) for their first US-brokered talks since February. 

President Donald Trump has vowed to use diplomacy to end the Ukraine war. During his 2024 presidential campaign, he repeatedly promised to end the conflict on his first day in office, though he later walked that promise back. Since returning to the White House, the president has expressed ongoing frustration with the intractability of the conflict, and has speculated that deep-seated hatred between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been the primary roadblock to a peace settlement.

In a March 2025 meeting at the White House, Trump told Zelenskyy that Ukraine lacked the proverbial “cards” to win the war. But strikes on Russia’s oil infrastructure, and now a warship in the Baltic, may suggest otherwise.

Europe May Not Like Ukrainian Assertiveness in the Baltic

Although NATO’s European members have largely supported Ukraine in the ongoing war, the fact that the drone strike occurred in the Gulf of Finland, the narrow stretch of the Baltic Sea between Finland and Estonia, may have been too close for comfort for the alliance members. Several of the drones launched near the Leningrad region had strayed into the airspace of Finland and the Baltic states.

Those nations have protested when Russian aircraft, including drones, have violated their airspace. At least publicly, they couldn’t be seen as allowing the Ukrainian drones to pass through.

Finnish Defense Minister Antti Häkkänen confirmed that Helsinki had reached out to Ukrainian authorities following the strike, Bloomberg reported on Friday morning.

“We’ve told the Ukrainians what a vulnerable and fragile defense entity this narrow Gulf of Finland is,” said Häkkänen, adding that conducting a drone strike in busy international waters carries high risks for environmental safety and civilian maritime traffic, and making it clear that Ukraine must account for such factors.

The strike may serve as a reminder of how perilous Russia’s access to the sea from St. Petersburg is, and how its main commercial and naval hubs in the region are essentially a vulnerable strategic chokepoint. Following the accessions of formerly neutral states Finland and Sweden to NATO in 2023 and 2024, the Baltic Sea is nearly surrounded by alliance territory. 

That has largely transformed the neutral waters into a heavily monitored and contested space where Russian naval and air power face severe anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) challenges. That has also served to isolate Russia’s heavily militarized exclave of Kaliningrad.

Western European Powers Have Bottled Up Russia in the Baltic Before

This isn’t the first time that a seemingly “regional” conflict in the Black Sea has spilled over into the Baltic Sea. Although the numerous Russo-Turkish Wars were fought primarily in the Black Sea region, the Balkans, and the Caucasus, and the Ottoman Navy was never able to extend its power into northern Europe, during the Crimean War, the British and French launched a major naval and amphibious campaign in the Baltic Sea against the Russian Empire.

In early 1854, a joint Anglo-French fleet entered the Baltic Sea under the command of British Admiral Sir Charles Napier, where the fleet blockaded Russian ports and cruised near St. Petersburg, applying pressure to the Russian capital. The allied force besieged and captured the Russian/Åland Islands fortifications at Bomarsund in August 1854, and operations resumed a year later. Several Russian coastal positions and fortifications were bombarded.

More importantly, the Allied Baltic campaign forced Russia to tie up hundreds of thousands of troops to defend its northern coastlines, keeping them away from the main theater of war in Crimea.

Ukraine can’t carry out anything similar in scale, but as noted, Russia’s presence in the Baltic is limited to the Gulf of Finland and the Kaliningrad exclave. Ukraine lacks any way of targeting the latter without violating Polish airspace, but the Gulf of Finland could be fair game.

About the Author: Peter Suciu

Peter Suciu regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. He has contributed to dozens of newspapers, magazines, and websites over a 30-year career in journalism, including Forbes and Clearance Jobs. He is based in Michigan. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu. You can email the author at Editor@nationalinterest.org.

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