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| The former U.S. Coast Guard Island-Class patrol boat Cushing (pictured, rear) was sunk March 3, 2022, by a Russian air strike, according to a Ukrainian mayor. Commissioned in the Ukranian Navy in 2019 as Sloviansk (rear), the ship is one of five former Coast Guard cutters transferred to Ukraine. (Ministry of Defense of Ukraine) |
International Military - Russian aircraft on Thursday managed to destroy the Ukrainian command boat Sloviansk, a former US Coast Guard Island Class command boat that was transferred to the country's cortege in 2019.
The mayor of the harborage megacity of Yuzhny, Volodymyr Novatsky, blazoned March 6 in a videotape posted to YouTube that the boat had sunk and an unknown number of crew members were missing, including a occupant of his city.
"On March 3, an air strike was carried out by adversary aircraft on the command boat Sloviansk, as a result of which the boat sank. People were also missing,"Novatsky said.
Known preliminarily as Coast Guard knife Cushing, the Sloviansk was moved to the Ukrainian megacity of Odessa, along with Starobilsk, formerly the US Coast Guard command vessel Drummond, which was also transferred to Ukraine in 2019.
The two were joined last November by the former Ocracoke and Washington Island Class command boats, named Sumy and Fastiv.
The vessels were bestowed to Ukraine under the Office of the Coast Guard for the Transnational Redundant Acquisition Defense Articles Program. As part of the agreement, crew members are trained in theU.S. at Coast Guard Yard in Baltimore by members of the Coast Guard Cutter Transition Division Training Team. The vessels will be supplemented by the Kiska Island Class command boat, which is slated for delivery to Ukraine in January 2022.
The former Ukrainian crew of the Kiska, now known as Kubrak, completed their training in Baltimore on October 22, but it's unclear whether the command boat had left the Coast Guard Yard.
The Coast Guard declined to note on Cushing's former exposure. And a prophet for the Coast GuardLt.Cmdr. Brittany Panetta said it was unhappy for active service members on board the boat to bandy the sinking of the boat.
49 Islet Class Coast Guard vessels were erected between 1985 and 1992 to perform coastal surveillance, law enforcement and hunt and deliverance operations, among other tasks. They're fortified with one Bushmaster Mk 38 Mod 0 machine gun system and two Browning M2HB heavy machine ordnance.
Fifteen remain in US service. Four serve in the Georgia Coast Guard while several serve in Costa Rica and Pakistan. The class is being replaced with 64 Sentinel class fast response knives, 45 of which are now functional. Ten days after Russia raided Ukraine, the situation in the Black Sea continues to deteriorate.
According to reports and social media, Ukraine sank its flagship frigate Hetman Sahaidachny on March 3 in Mykolaiv, while there were reports on March 7 of a boat being fired from Odessa, with an image of bank jutting from Russian corvette Vasily Bykov, one of the vessels that took part in the attack. at the Ukrainian village on Snake Island on February 24.