According to the Ukrainian military intelligence agency, a special operations unit destroyed the Sergey Kotov, a large patrol vessel, overnight with Magura V5 unmanned vessels.
Ukraine said Tuesday it sank another Russian warship in the Black Sea using high-tech marine drones as Kyiv forces continue to attack targets far from the front lines. Russian authorities did not confirm the incident.
According to the Ukrainian military intelligence agency, a special operations unit destroyed the Sergey Kotov, a large patrol vessel, overnight with Magura V5 unmanned vessels — designed and built in Ukraine — loaded with explosives. The vessel, which kyiv says was hit near the Kerch Strait, can carry cruise missiles and around 60 crew members.
The Ukrainian report could not immediately be independently verified, and disinformation has been another element of the war that began when Kremlin troops invaded the neighboring country in February 2022.
Kyiv’s forces are trying to control the better-equipped Russian army in some areas along the virtually static 1,500-kilometer (930-mile) front line, but they are also attacking targets far from the battlefields.
Last month, Ukraine said it sank two rival warships with drones. On February 1 it reported the sinking of the missile-armed corvette Ivanovets, and on February 14 it said it destroyed the landing ship Caesar Kunikov. The Kremlin did not confirm either incident.
According to Kyiv authorities, about 20% of Russian missile attacks on Ukraine are launched from the Black Sea, and attacking Moscow’s fleet in the area is embarrassing for the Kremlin.
Almost a year ago, the flagship of the Russian Black Sea fleet, the guided missile cruiser Moskva, sank after being severely damaged during a missile attack.
The Ukrainian military intelligence service (GUR) said on Monday that it had damaged a railway bridge in the Russian region of Samara, more than 750 km from the border with Ukraine, over which Russia was transporting explosive munitions.
“The GUR confirms that the railway bridge over the Chapaevka River, in the Russian region of Samara, has been left unusable,” he said, specifying that the infrastructure had been damaged by “a detonation.”
According to Ukrainian military intelligence, the bridge was used to transport explosive munitions produced at the Polimer factory in the city of Chapaevsk in the Samara region, about 850 kilometers southeast of Moscow.
The attack on the bridge – which allows trains to cross the Chapaevka River – occurred around 6:00 a.m. this Monday (local time).
“Given the nature of the damage to the railway bridge, it will be impossible to use it for a long time,” reads the note published by the GUR on its social networks.
Shortly before, the regional train company had indicated that the incident had not caused any injuries and was caused by “the intervention of unauthorized persons”, according to the terms used by the Russian authorities for these types of events.
