New footage appears to show the moment Ukrainian naval drones struck a Russian patrol vessel off the coast of the annexed Crimean peninsula overnight after Moscow’s attempts to fend off the uncrewed vehicles.
An indistinct night-time video looks to show the Russian vessel, the Sergei Kotov, firing on incoming Ukrainian surface drones several times before a bright explosion.
The brief clip was posted to messaging app Telegram by a local channel covering Crimea, the peninsula to the south of mainland Ukraine that Russia has controlled since 2014. It was also reshared by a Russian nationalist “z-blogger” Vladislav Pozdnyakov (who left his watermark on the footage published elsewhere).
Newsweek could not independently verify the footage.
VASILY MAXIMOV/AFP via Getty Images
Early on Tuesday, Ukraine’s military intelligence agency said a special unit of its forces had targeted the Sergei Kotov patrol ship belonging to Moscow’s Black Sea Fleet in an overnight attack.
The agency, known as the GUR, used Ukrainian-designed Magura V5 naval drones in the attack, coordinated with the Ukrainian military and Kyiv’s digital transformation ministry, the GUR said in a statement.
The vessel “suffered damage to the stern, right and left sides,” the GUR added in a post to social media.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.