The Russian fleet shot down a drone off the port of Sevastopol in Crimea on Thursday, local authorities said, as attacks attributed to Kyiv have multiplied in recent weeks against Russian bases.
“This morning, a Black Sea Fleet guard ship shot down a drone over the water,” Sevastopol Governor Mikhail Razvojaev said on Telegram, without giving further details.
This announcement comes as several Russian bases, some located several hundred kilometers from Ukraine, have been targeted in recent days by drone attacks attributed by Moscow to Kyiv.
Crimea, a peninsula annexed in 2014 by Moscow, has also been hit by several drone attacks in recent weeks. On November 22, Russian anti-aircraft defenses shot down two drones near a Crimean power plant, according to the governor of Sevastopol.
Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, based in the port of Sevastopol, was hit in late October by what authorities said was a ‘massive’ drone attack, which damaged at least one vessel and led Moscow to briefly pull out of a grain agreement in Ukraine.
The Ukrainian army moved closer to Crimea thanks to a victorious counter-offensive which enabled it to retake the strategic city of Kherson, in the south of the country, in mid-November, after having carried out strikes for weeks on the lines Russian logistics with the help of informants operating behind enemy lines.
Moreover, the Russian security services (FSB) announced Thursday the arrest of two residents of Sevastopol suspected of having transmitted to Ukraine information on military targets.
In a statement, the FSB indicates that one of the suspects was recruited in 2016 by kyiv and has transmitted, since the massive Kremlin attack against Ukraine at the end of February, “information on the location of Ministry installations Russian Defense”.
His accomplice is accused of having “gathered and transmitted to a foreign special service, via WhatsApp messaging, information on FSB installations”, added this source.
The FSB does not specify the date of their arrest and does not provide any additional details on their identity. An investigation for “high treason”, punishable by 20 years in prison, has been opened.