The Kremlin has fired its top naval commander after a series of spectacular attacks by Ukraine on Russia’s Black Sea fleet, Russian media reports.

Vladimir Putin sacked Adm Nikolai Yevmenov, who has been in command of the navy since 2019, and replaced him with the commander of its northern fleet, Adm Alexander Moiseyev, reported the newspaper Izvestia, owned by one of Putin’s closest confidants.

The apparent reshuffle at the top of the Russian military leadership highlights the fallout in Moscow over Ukraine’s continued ability to sink major Russian warships in the Black Sea.

Although Ukraine began the war with no navy, scuttling its only frigate to prevent it from falling into Russian hands, Kyiv has gradually pushed back against Moscow’s early dominance of the Black Sea through long-range missile attacks and the innovative use of sea drones.

As a result, Moscow has been forced to withdraw most of its Black Sea fleet from its main base in Crimea to Novorossiysk on the Russian mainland, while Ukraine has been able to restart grain exports from Odesa and other nearby ports, bringing them back to prewar levels.

Ukraine believes a third of Russia’s once powerful Black Sea fleet, which numbered 80 ships before the war, has been destroyed in the two years of conflict. This year, Ukraine used sea drones to sink the modern Russian warship Sergei Kotov and a heavy assault ship, the Tsezar Kuniko.

Kyiv’s successes in the Black Sea have offered the country a much-needed boost in morale at a time when its ammunition-starved forces are on the defensive across the battlefield in eastern Ukraine.

The Kremlin on Monday refused to comment on reports of Yevmenov’s dismissal. “There are decrees classified as secret,” the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters. “I cannot comment on them. There were no open decrees published about this.”

It is not unusual for the Kremlin to leave questions over military leadership positions unanswered. It has still not commented on the sacking of the aerospace forces chief Sergei Surovikin. He was quietly dismissed last summer for his alleged closeness to the Wagner chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin.

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Yevmenov’s firing comes days after the international criminal court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant against him, accusing him of crimes against humanity for directing missile strikes against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure between October 2022 and March 2023.

The Kremlin’s winter campaign crippled the Ukrainian grid, causing widespread blackouts and leaving millions of civilians in the dark without electricity and heating.