Sea Drones Strike Russian Landing Ships

By Aliaksandr Kudrytski (Bloomberg) Ukraine said naval drones struck Russian military ships in Crimea overnight in a new attack aimed at disabling defenses on the occupied peninsula.  

The attack damaged two “Serna” landing craft with crews and armored vehicles on board, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said Friday on social media platform X, formerly Twitter. Russia used the vessels to host mobile air-defense units after relocating larger ships away from Crimea following earlier attacks, according to the ministry. 

The Russian Defense Ministry hasn’t commented on the claims. The pro-Moscow military blogger Rybar, which has 1.2 million subscribers on Telegram, wrote that four unmanned Ukrainian attack boats hit Russian ships moored in a bay off western Crimea, without saying where it got the information. Bloomberg can’t independently verify the information.

Ukraine’s military has stepped up attacks on Russian’s Black Sea naval fleet in recent months, using a combination of missiles, special forces raids and naval drones to reach as far as the port of Novorossiysk. Satellite images last month indicated that part of the Russian fleet likely moved from its base in Crimea’s Sevastopol to Russia’s Novorossiysk further east to avoid Ukrainian missile attacks. 

Russia sees Ukraine’s use of naval drones as a growing threat, even citing them recently amid reasons for exiting the Black Sea grain deal.

© 2023 Bloomberg L.P.

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