Ukraine claimed Tuesday that it had destroyed a Russian war patrol vessel near the Crimean peninsula annexed by Russia, a new snub for Moscow in this strategic area of the Black Sea.
kyiv also said it had struck an oil depot in the Russian region of Belgorod, which borders Ukraine. In recent weeks, similar attacks against oil sites have followed one another in Russia.
On the Black Sea, the Ukrainian navy claimed that a “special unit” had “destroyed the most modern Russian patrol boat, the Sergei Kotov”, on the night of Monday to Tuesday, which had been “hit by Magura maritime drones V5”.
The attack occurred “in Ukrainian territorial waters, near the Kerch Strait,” she said, adding that the patrol boat had already been “severely damaged” last September during a previous attack by the forces. Ukrainians.
The attack was carried out by Ukrainian military intelligence (GUR) with the cooperation of the Ukrainian Navy, according to the latter.
The GUR released a black-and-white video on Tuesday showing the alleged nighttime attack. In the images, we can see a naval drone approaching the Sergei Kotov — 94 meters long — then an explosion with a large flame, smoke and debris projected above the ship.
The Russian Defense Ministry has not yet made an official comment on the attack, but Russian military bloggers close to the armed forces have confirmed the strike, with some emphasizing the Russian navy’s inability to defend itself.
“Occupation symbol”
In two years of war, Kiev’s forces managed to force the powerful Russian fleet in the Black Sea to retreat using missiles and maritime drones, allowing the reopening of a maritime corridor to export Ukrainian grain by making ignored bombing threats.
According to the Ukrainian army at the beginning of February, around a third of Russian military ships were “put out of harm’s way” in this area.
“The Russian Black Sea Fleet is a symbol of occupation. It cannot be in Ukrainian Crimea,” the head of the Ukrainian presidential administration Andriï Iermak commented on Telegram on Tuesday, after the announcement of the destruction of the Russian patrol boat.
Crimea, a peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014, is regularly targeted because it is important for the logistics of the Russian army for its operations on the front.
Russian oil depot attacked
kyiv also claimed responsibility for a drone strike on Tuesday on an oil depot in the Russian region of Belgorod, bordering Ukraine.
According to a Ukrainian military source interviewed by AFP, an attack organized by the GUR hit this site located in the village of Dolgoye, in the Gubkin district, approximately 90 km north of Belgorod, the regional capital.
In the other Russian region of Kursk, “the Gluchkovo railway station was targeted by strikes from Ukraine,” Roman Starovoit, the regional governor, wrote on Telegram, specifying that the attack “did not number of injured”.
These strikes caused a fire that was quickly contained and damaged high voltage lines, depriving the Gluchkovo station and the nearby village of Koulbaki of electricity, according to the same source.
The Ukrainian Air Force, for its part, indicated that it had intercepted 18 of the 22 Shahed explosive drones launched in the Odessa region by Russia during a new night attack, which did not cause any casualties or destruction. .
On Saturday, a drone attack on Odessa left 12 dead after hitting an apartment building.
Macron calls on allies to “not be cowardly”
On the ground, the Ukrainian army still suffers from a lack of weapons and ammunition to repel Russian attacks, particularly to the west of the town of Avdiivka, taken by Moscow forces in mid-February after four months of fighting. murderers.
On the subject of aid to Ukraine, French President Emmanuel Macron is in Prague to support a Czech initiative to buy non-EU munitions for kyiv.
He called on Ukraine’s allies to “not be cowardly” in the face of a Russia that had “become unstoppable”, appearing to take responsibility for his controversial comments on the possibility of sending Western troops to this country at war.
In Brussels, the European Commission must for its part propose on Tuesday to finance part of the arms purchases decided jointly by the 27, in order to strengthen defense capabilities on the continent, in the face of the Russian threat.
Finally in Germany, Defense Minister Boris Pistorius attributed recent leaks in the German army on arms deliveries to Kiev to a serious “individual error”, one of the officers having participated in the meeting via a “ unauthorized connection.