Tonight, May 19, the command of the Naval Forces of the Ukrainian Armed Forces announced the destruction of the Russian Project 266M Kovrovets minesweeper of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. Where exactly and with what they hit the ship is not reported.
ICTV Facts collected information about the destroyed Kovrovets.
The minesweeper Kovrovets was built at the Sredne-Nevsky shipyard in St. Petersburg.
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November 8, 1974 Kovrovets was introduced into the fleet. Since July 1982, the minesweeper was called Kursk Komsomolets, in 1992 it was renamed Gunner, and already in 1999 — in Kovrovets.
Technical characteristics
- Full speed: 16.5 knots
- Navigation range: 1500 miles (12 knots)
- Sailing autonomy: 10 days
- Crew: 68 (6 officers, 8 midshipmen)
Dimensions of the minesweeper Kovrovets
- Displacement: standard — 745 t, full — 800 t
- Length: 61 m
- Width: 10.2 m
- Draft: 2.97 m
- Engines: 2×2500 l. s.
Misweeper armament
- 2×4 launchers for the 9K32 Strela-2 air defense system;
- 2×2 30 mm AK-230M — 2000 shots — artillery control radar station Lynx;
- 2×2 25 mm twin universal gun 2M-3M — 2000 shots;
- 2×1 14.5 mm machine gun mounts Sting — pr.02668;
- 2×5 rocket launcher-1200M Hurricane.
Mine seeker-destroyer KIU-1, high-speed contact trawl, electromagnetic trawl TEM-4, acoustic trawl AT-3, cord charges ShZ-1 or ShZ-2.
UNIAN
Purpose of the minesweeper Kovrovets
Kovrovets – a minesweeper with the code Aquamarine-M is designed for the safe passage of ships and vessels, reconnaissance and control trawling (carrying out), laying fairways (ship passages) in minefields, etc.
Service history
In 1988, guided 32 tankers and other vessels through mined areas of the Persian Gulf.
From 2006 to 2007, the minesweeper Kovrovets was repaired in Streletskaya Bay in Sevastopol.
In February 2016, Kovrovets patrolled the waters off the coast of Syria.
In January 2017, the minesweeper Kovrovets became part of the Russian Navy in the Mediterranean Sea.
Irrecoverable losses
In October 2022, there were reports of damage to a similar minesweeper of Project 266M — Ivan Golubets, recalled military-political observer of the Information Resistance group Alexander Kovalenko.
According to him, these sea minesweepers were directly involved in mining the exclusive economic zone of Ukraine, thereby blocking shipping.
Alexander Kovalenko pointed out an interesting fact that today Russia does not have the opportunity to revive the construction of Project 266M ships, that is, the loss of the minesweepers Ivan Golubets and Kovrovets is irreversible.
Before the war, the Russian Navy had only seven such ships and two of them were in the Black Sea Flotilla, if you do not take into account Cherkassy and Chernigov captured in 2014.
