August 2025. After learning through satellite images that the Russian nuclear submarine base had been was damaged After an earthquake, Ukraine leaked all the secrets of Moscow’s most advanced submarine, including its failures. Now, two months later, one of them has appeared off the coast of France.
And, instead of fear, Europe has been amused.
The silence broken. For days, NATO radars followed the strange figure of a Russian submarine that, instead of slipping secretly under the sea, clumsily advanced on the surface. Was Novorossiyska Kilo-class diesel-electric of the Black Sea Fleet, one of the few assets that still maintained Moscow’s flag in the Mediterranean.
His march was slow and visible, accompanied by French, British and Dutch ships that escorted him with the same mix of caution and curiosity with which an injured animal is observed. For the Atlantic Alliance, that voyage was more than just a naval anomaly: it was a exhaustion signa reflection of what remains of Russian maritime power after three and a half years of war, sanctions and irreparable losses.
Adrift. The official Moscow version It was immediate. According to the Black Sea Fleet, the Novorossiysk was sailing on the surface simply to comply with international standards when crossing the English Channel. But allied intelligence reports and leaks on Russian security channels painted a different picture: a damaged submarine, with a possible fuel leak, forced to surface repeatedly and, according to some reportseven to empty flooded compartments.
The presence of a tugboat, he Yakov Grebelskiyreinforced that suspicion. For NATO commanders, the image of an attack ship “limping” toward its base was not only a metaphor for a technical breakdown, but the demonstration how Russian naval machinery is rusting in the eyes of the world.
From Tartus to the Mediterranean. Until a few years ago, Russia maintained a permanent force in the Mediterranean, anchored in the Syrian base of Tartusits strategic bastion in the region. From there it projected power towards the Middle East and North Africa, protecting energy routes and monitoring Western transit. But the fall of the regime of Bashar al Assad in 2024 erased that balance in one fell swoop.
With the new Syrian government, Moscow lost its last platform safe outside the Black Sea. Today, how he ironized NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, “there is hardly any Russian presence left in the Mediterranean: just a lonely, broken submarine returning from patrol.” The decline is not measured in the number of sunken ships, but in the disappearance of an entire naval projection doctrine.
The laughs. In his speech at the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in Slovenia, Rutte was so precise as biting. “What a change from Tom Clancy’s novel The Hunt for Red October, he said. Today, more like the hunt for the nearest mechanic.” The phrase, celebrated among the attendees, synthesized the new allied narrative: humor and joke as a language of power.
Making fun of your opponent, taking away the mystique of their strength, is also a way of undermining their influence. Behind the irony, however, there was a geopolitical calculation. Rutte remembered the multiple Russian provocations in the last few months (drones over Europe, sabotage of underwater cables, failed plots, cyber attacks and instability in Finland and Poland), and warned that Moscow retains the capacity to inconvenience, although its military muscle has been reduced to symbolic gestures and worn-out threats.
The invisible collapse. The Novorossiysk debacle It is not an isolated case. Since 2022, Ukraine has managed to destroy or disable more than thirty of Russian vessels with anti-ship missiles and marine drones. The losses have forced the Kremlin to withdraw a large part of its fleet from Sevastopol and move it to Novorossiysk, on the eastern coast of the sea, to avoid new attacks.
That strategic refuge, paradoxically, bears the same name as the damaged submarine that is now trying to reach it. What was a symbol of supremacy in the Soviet era has become a floating cemetery of incomplete projects and demoralized crews.
Mirror of war. If you like, the episode from Novorossiysk transcends the anecdotal. It represents the convergence of all fronts where Russia is wasting away: the military, the economic, the technological and the symbolic. Its fleet, once the second in the world, now depends on units that they age without spare partsas Ukraine innovates with drones that cost a fraction of its missiles.
And NATO, aware of this, has learned to transform its silent victories in public stories that erode the perception of Russian invulnerability. The image of Novorossiysk advancing in the sight of everyone, towed and watched, it is the perfect image if you want to degrade an empire that can no longer hide its weaknesses.
From shadow to emptiness. In the years of the Cold War, Soviet submarines were the silent terror of the Atlantic. Today, his most visible heir is a damaged ship that sails with the flag raised so as not to sink. This passage from shadow to void explains better than any report the real state of the Russian navy.
What was previously feared, is now observed even with sarcasm, and what previously inspired respect, now provokes a mocking headline. In this transit we measure, according to Europe, the decline of a power and the rise of a Western communication strategy that no longer needs to confront directly to win. It is enough to unintentionally let the enemy show his shipwreck. And have a few laughs.
Image | BORN
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