On Monday, April 8, 2024, the Ukrainian news portal RBK-Ukraine reported, citing its sources in the special services, that a serious fire had occurred the day before aboard the Russian missile corvette RFS Serpukhov (563) of the project 21631 (Buyan-M), moored at the port of the Russian Navy in Baltiysk in the Kaliningrad Oblast.
RFS Serpukhov (563) project 21631 (Bujan-M) / Illustrative photo: Messir via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
The cause of the fire was not disclosed, but what spices up the story is a short video clip published by the Main Directorate Of Intelligence of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense (HUR MO), released on Monday afternoon. The description stated that as a result of the elemental event, communication assets and automation systems were destroyed, the ship was immobilized, and restoring it to operational and combat readiness will take a significant amount of time.
In the video itself, technical plans of the ship of project 21631 are visible, along with an alleged recording from inside the unit showing the moment of the fire outbreak. The nature of the event suggests the potential use of an incendiary grenade or similar device.
Serpukhov – one of the two small missile ships of project 21631 Buyan-M transferred in October 2016 to the Baltic Fleet of the Russian Navy, alongside RFS Zelenyy Dol (562), to which two more ships, RFS Grad (575) and RFS Naro-Fominsk (595), were added on December 29, 2022, and December 25, 2023, respectively. The ships are subordinate to the 36th Missile Ships Brigade.
However, before Serpukhov joined the Baltic Fleet, it served briefly in the Black Sea Fleet (from December 12, 2015), but it managed to participate in Russia’s military operations in Syria, attacking targets of the terrorist organization Jabhat al-Nusra on August 19, 2016.
The ships of project 21631 Buyan-M have a length of 74.1 meters, a width of 11 meters, and a draft of 2.6 meters. The standard displacement is 850 tons, and the full displacement is 949 tons. The ships are armed with a 100 mm A-190-01 naval gun, two 14.5 mm machine guns, three 7.62 mm machine guns, and one 30 mm AK-630M-2 dual rotary cannon, as well as two quadruple surface-to-air missile systems 3M47 Gibka with Igla-M/Vierba missiles. However, the most important armament is the eight-cell universal vertical launcher 3S-14 of the UKSK system for Kalibr-NK cruise missiles (alternatively, it can use P-800 Oniks missiles).
