Assigned to the Black Sea Fleet, Soobrazitelny entered service a few weeks before Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, began in June 1941.

She participated in the Raid on Constanța and provided fire support to the defenders during the Siege of Odessa, in addition to service on escort duty through the remainder of the year.

The crew complement of the Storozhevoy class numbered 207 in peacetime, but this increased to 271 in wartime, as more personnel were needed to operate additional equipment.

Variations in fuel oil capacity meant that the range of the Project 7Us varied from 1,380 to 2,700 nautical miles (2,560 to 5,000 km; 1,590 to 3,110 mi) at 19 knots (35 km/h; 22 mph), that lower figure demonstrated by Soobrazitelny.

Two pumps were installed in the former magazines, and winches, cable hangers, compressed air cylinders, and decompression chambers were fitted on the deck and superstructure.

The destroyer was accepted by the navy on 10 May 1941 and became part of the Black Sea Fleet on 7 June when the Soviet naval jack was hoisted aboard her.

After leaving Sevastopol on the night of 25/26 June, the ships of the support group lost sight of each other in the darkness and only at dawn did Soobrazitelny catch up with Voroshilov.

She escorted the damaged Kharkov back to Sevastopol, fending off an attacks by two lone bombers and depth charging what was erroneously thought to be a submarine, which was claimed as sunk.

[11][12] She was forced to maneuver and put up smoke screens to avoid Romanian artillery fire, and was attacked by aircraft several times, including a near miss from a Ju 87 dive bomber on 2 September.

[13] While escorting three transports from Feodosia to Sevastopol between 6 and 7 September, Soobrazitelny had to be towed on the final leg of the route to avoid acoustic mines, which had recently damaged the destroyer Bystry.

[16] Together with Sposobny and the destroyer leader Tashkent, Soobrazitelny departed Batumi on 26 November to escort three tankers and the icebreaker Anastas Mikoyan to the Bosporus en route to the Soviet Far East.

On the last day of the year, Captain 1st rank Nikolay Basisty, commanding the naval forces in the operation, hoisted his flag aboard the ship.

In two separate bombardments that day, she fired a total of 122 shells against a German airfield and a suspected troop concentration on the Kerch-Feodosia road.

She continued to provide fire support to the landings and was targeted twice without result by German bombers on 3 January, when she was forced to return to Novorossiysk due to a lack of fuel; Basisty transferred his flag to the destroyer Boyky.

The quick action of her captain in taking her out of Novorossiysk harbor during a storm on 22 January allowed her to avoid the damage suffered by other ships there, and Soobrazitelny underwent preventative maintenance in February.

Nearing Sevastopol, the destroyer was attacked without result by three German bombers and targeted by artillery, forcing her to steam into Severnaya Bay at high speed under a smoke screen.

While refueling for the voyage to Sevastopol, she was sent to assist the severely damaged Tashkent back to port,[20] taking off 1,975 wounded soldiers and evacuated civilians from the destroyer leader before being relieved by torpedo boats and Bditelny.

Her AA gunners were training when the raid began and opened fire on the attackers, helping the ship to escape without direct hits.

Soobrazitelny expended 203 main-gun shells, one of which was erroneously reported by partisans to have sunk a submarine in Yalta harbor, and drove off an approaching torpedo boat with 76 mm fire.

While steaming to Poti in November, five sailors died of burns suffered when a pipe burst in a boiler room, the only losses aboard her during the war.

The flooding aboard the latter was contained and Soobrazitelny escorted her back to the Caucasus, fending off two air attacks en route before reaching Batumi on 2 December.

[22] Soobrazitelny continued to make sorties between bases in the first half of 1943, and expended a total of 605 130 mm shells in bombardments on 31 January and 4 February against targets near Novorossiysk and in support of the landing at nearby Yuzhnaya Ozereyka.

The loss of three destroyers to German air attack on 6 October 1943 resulted in Stalin's order that forbade the deployment of large warships of the Black Sea Fleet without his express permission; this meant the end of her active participation in the war.

[7] After a brief period in this auxiliary role, she was mothballed at Sevastopol on 27 March 1960 and reclassified as a target ship on 14 September 1963, receiving the designation TsL-3 on 31 December of that year.