Attack with naval drones

Kiev claims to have sunk Russian warship

The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense published this video of the attack in the Black Sea.(Bild: Ukraine Defence Forces)

In its defensive battle against the Russian navy, Ukraine claims to have achieved another success in the Black Sea. On Thursday night, the missile ship Ivanovets was sunk by several naval drones, the Ukrainian military intelligence service announced on Thursday. The attack took place on the west coast of the Crimean peninsula, which has been annexed by Russia since 2014. There has been no confirmation of this incident from the Russian side so far.

As evidence, Kiev showed a video in which several sea drones loaded with explosives head towards the Russian warship one after the other and explode. The ship was reportedly listing and ultimately sank.

Since the Russian invasion almost two years ago, the Ukrainian military has repeatedly sunk and damaged Russian warships with missiles and naval drones. The Russian Black Sea fleet has thus been largely pushed out of the western part of the Black Sea.

Missile hits Ukrainian hospital
Meanwhile, according to information from Kiev, a Russian missile hit a hospital in the Kharkiv region in the north-east of the country. Four people were slightly injured and 38 were evacuated, the governor of the region, Oleh Synehubov, announced on Telegram. The facade, windows and roof of the hospital had been damaged.

Russia, for its part, reported almost a dozen Ukrainian drone attacks in the border region. Eight drones were shot down by Russian air defense over the Belgorod region, two in Voronezh and one in Kursk, reported the Ministry of Defense in Moscow. Nothing is yet known about possible casualties and damage.

It is not possible to independently verify whether all the projectiles were actually fended off on approach. In the case of Ukrainian drone attacks, the Russian side often only reports supposed successes of its own air defense.

Belbek airbase hit at the weekend
It was only on Wednesday that the Ukrainian army launched massive missile strikes on the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which Russia annexed in violation of international law. The Ukrainian air force commander Mykola Oleshchuk then published a video showing a hit on the Russian air base in Belbek, not far from the city of Sevastopol. On Thursday morning, Russian social networks also suggested, citing anonymous sources, that a Ukrainian missile had hit Belbek. This has not yet been independently confirmed.