She’s The Last In Her Class. A Uniquely Ukrainian Armored Boat Whose Mission Is To Defend Kyiv.

Kyiv shipbuilder Kuznia na Rybalskomu managed to build seven Gyurza-M patrol boats for the Ukrainian navy before Russia widened its war on Ukraine in February 2022 and disrupted production.

A year later, Kyiv is safe from Russian attack and shipbuilding has resumed in the city. Kuznia na Rybalskomu has launched the eighth and last planned Gyurza-M.

The Gyurza-M is uniquely Ukrainian. A 75-foot, 54-ton, five-person armored boat with two 30-millimeter auto-cannons, a grenade-launcher, a machine gun and space for shoulder-fired anti-tank or anti-aircraft missiles.

The seven Gyurza-Ms that Kuznia na Rybalskomu completed before Russia’s wider invasion together accounted for much of the Ukrainian navy’s firepower. The fleet’s only big warship, the 403-foot frigate Hetman Sagaidachny, was armed with a 100-millimeter gun and a pair of 30-millimeter auto-cannons.

So it should come as no surprise that the Russians targeted the boats. In the chaotic early weeks of the war, Russian forces captured two of the Gyurza-Ms as they occupied the Ukrainian port of Berdyansk, and another two of the boats when they marched into the port of Mariupol.

That left three of the class in Ukrainian service and one on the slipway at Kuznia na Rybalskomu. That fourth boat—eighth in her class and reportedly named Bucha after the pivotal battle—will commission into a changed fleet once her testing wraps up, any day now.

Hetman Sagaidachny is sunk at her moorings in the free port of Odesa, scuttled by her crew in the panicky first few days of the war. The only big ship left in the Ukrainian fleet is the aging, 267-foot landing ship Yuri Olefirenko.

It’s not that the Russian navy controls the Black Sea. After losing several vessels to Ukrainian anti-ship missiles—including its flagship, the 612-foot cruiser Moskva—the Black Sea Fleet has retreated to its ports. But the absence of Russian warships hasn’t brought Ukrainian warships back to sea.

Instead, the Ukrainian fleet has transformed into a river fleet. Between the navy, the army, special operations command and the quasi-military Sea Guard, the Ukrainian government deploys potentially hundreds of riverine patrol boats and landing craft. Some of them donated by the United States and other allies. Others converted from civilian vessels.

The boats mostly operate on the wide Dnipro River, which cuts north to south across Ukraine, winding past Kyiv and emptying into the Black Sea near liberated Kherson.

They haul army platoons from riverbank to riverbank, speed commandos toward their targets in nighttime raids and, equally importantly, control the Dnipro River so that the Russian can’t control it. “We must have the appropriate forces and means to withstand the enemy at our main waterway,” Vice Adm. Oleksiy Neizhpapa said.

The riverine fleet is organized in divisions, including one that patrols around Kyiv. Bucha, the last in her class of armored patrol boats, reportedly will lead the Kyiv division.