Russia claimed on Friday to have destroyed eight Ukrainian drones in the border areas of Kursk and Belgorod, and an unmanned boat on its way to Crimea.
“During a patrol by a Ka-29 naval aviation helicopter of the Black Sea Fleet, an unmanned boat of the Ukrainian Armed Forces was discovered and destroyed in the northwestern part of the Black Sea,” the Russian Defense Ministry said.
The Russian-appointed governor of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhaev, announced on social media in the early morning hours that the Russian military “repelled an attack by two unmanned maritime vessels.”
Ukraine regularly uses naval drones to attack Russian targets, particularly off the coast of Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.
Crewless ships have become a threat to the Russian navy’s superiority, forcing the Black Sea Fleet to move ships to more distant ports, the Spanish agency EFE said.
The ministry had said on Wednesday it had prevented an incursion into Crimea by a landing party of Ukrainian troops heading to Cape Tarkhankut in a fast military boat and three jet skis, the Russian agency TASS said.
During the night, Russian anti-aircraft defense shot down a ‘drone’ (remote-controlled aircraft) in Kursk, a region bordering Ukraine, near Sumi.
Three waves of Ukrainian attacks followed Belgorod, further south, near Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, where bombings on a village reported by Kiev on Thursday killed 50 civilians.
Without specifying whether any device was intercepted, the Russian ministry said antiaircraft shot down seven drones over the Belgorod region.
The capital of the same name, Belgorod, is located about 160 kilometers from the village that was bombed by Russia the day before.
Thursday’s attack killed 52 people after one died in hospital, according to an update released on Friday by the head of the Kharkiv Regional Military Administration, Oleg Siniegubov.
Russia shelled two neighborhoods in central Kharkov with Iskander missiles in the early hours of Friday, killing a 10-year-old boy and wounding another 13 people, according to the regional prosecutor’s office.
Information released by both sides about the progress of the war cannot be immediately verified by independent sources.
The war that Russia started on February 24, 2022 caused a number of yet-to-be-determined civilian and military casualties.
Source: DN
