Taken out of action by propeller damage in the first half of July, the destroyer returned to service in late August, conducting shore bombardments and minelaying during the Siege of Leningrad.

Stoyky saw little action for the rest of the war, receiving the title of Guards in 1942 and being renamed Vitse-Admiral Drozd (Вице-адмирал Дрозд) in 1943.

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 upper figure demonstrated by Storozhevoy.

[8] Accepted by a state commission on 18 October 1940, the destroyer spent six months in Tallinn, during which defects found during trials were remedied and the organization of the crew settled.

Stoyky officially joined the Baltic Fleet Light Forces Detachment on 12 April 1941,[9] and was based in Ust-Dvinsk when Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, began on 22 June.

Along with her sister Silny, she bombarded Finnish positions on the coast of Vyborg Bay between 25 and 27 August, expending 490 main-gun shells, in addition to another 60 against transports near Tranzund.

Within six minutes her moorings were slipped and Stoyky moved out of the shelling zone, although her propeller was damaged by contact with the pier due to the hasty departure; her crew lost nine wounded during the action.

189, Stoyky departed Kronstadt for the evacuation of the Hanko Naval Base on the night of 1 November, along with her sister Slavny and Marti.

Arriving at Hanko on the morning of 2 November, the destroyers found themselves under constant artillery fire, but Stoyky managed to evacuate 500 soldiers with their rifles and three Maxim anti-aircraft guns to Kronstadt under the cover of darkness.

A second sortie to Hanko proved unsuccessful due to a strong storm and snow, which forced the ships to turn back to Gogland, where the destroyer participated in the evacuation of the garrison of that island for the next several days.

[11] The destroyer was fired on by Finnish 8-inch (203 mm) artillery batteries off Seivästö on 5 December; although ice floes prevented her from maneuvering, she silenced the guns with 68 main-gun shells.

[9] On that day, her crew was credited with downing a German bomber with a heavy machine gun, the last time she put up anti-aircraft fire during the war.