August 5 – Ukrainian sea drones attacked a major naval base in Russia on Friday, leaving a damaged Russian warship listing in the Black Sea in a brazen strike carried out hundreds of miles from Ukrainian-held territory.
Dramatic social media videos showed the vessel, an amphibious Russian landing ship, tilting badly and sitting very low in the water as it was being towed near the base at Novorossiysk, Russia’s largest port, according to CNN on Saturday.
The incident comes against the backdrop of rising tensions in the Black Sea and stepped up Ukrainian strikes against targets across Russia after President Volodymr Zelensky pledged to “return” the war to Russian territory.
A Ukrainian source told CNN that a sea drone carrying nearly 1,000 pounds of TNT had hit the ship, and claimed there were about 100 Russian servicemen aboard.
In the meantime Vladimir Rogov, a Russian-installed official in the southern Ukrainian region of Zaporizhzhia, said several members of the ship’s crew were injured by broken glass in the attack, according to Moscow Times.
“The detonation due to the explosion on the ship was visible from the peninsula, which the local residents thought was an explosion in the vicinity of Yakovenkovo settlement not far from the Crimean bridge,” Rogov wrote on Telegram.
Traffic on the bridge linking the Moscow-annexed Crimean peninsula to Russia was halted for around three hours and resumed early Saturday, according to the highways information center’s Telegram channel.
The Marine Traffic vessel-tracking website showed the SIG stationary and attended by tugs just south of the strait.
The latest attack in the Black Sea came a day after Ukraine said it had carried out a seaborne drone strike on a Russian navy ship at Novorossiysk naval base in southern Russia.
Russia said Friday it had repelled an attempted attack on the base by the Ukrainian armed forces “with the use of two unmanned sea boats.”
The number of attacks in the Black Sea by both sides has increased since Moscow exited a deal last month that had allowed Ukrainian grain exports via the shipping hub during the conflict between the two countries. /argumentum.al
