A screen grab captured from a video shows the more than 20 Russian navy ships started a military drill in the Black Sea, in Russia on January 26, 2022. The ship in this picture is not the ship in this story.
Russian Defence Ministry / Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Ukraine attacked a Russian warship using a sea drone on Friday, according to videos.
The country is focusing on building bigger and more powerful sea drones, an expert told Insider.
It wants to “get more explosives on board” and ramp up its attacks on flagships, he said.
Ukraine this morning used a sea drone to attack a Russian warship in the Black Sea, according to videos circulating on social media.
The attack on the vessel Olenegorsky Gornya at the Russian port of Novorossiysk was carried out by a drone with around 450 kilograms of TNT, a Ukrainian source told CNN.
But this may only be the start. Earlier this week, Stephen Wright, a drone technology developer, told Insider that Ukraine is preparing to step up its attacks on the Russian Black Sea fleet with large, powerful drones.
In dashcam footage tweeted out Friday by Anton Gerashchenko, an advisor to the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, a drone is seen heading straight toward the warship before slamming into its side.
Even though Russia claimed it thwarted the attack, additional footage taken later shows the ship was badly damaged. Ukrainian intelligence services claimed they put it out of action.
It’s unknown what type of sea drone Ukraine used to attack the Russian ship. However, Wright told Insider that since launching one of its first large-scale drone attacks on the Russian-occupied Sevastopol Naval Base last October, the sea drones that Ukraine is designing are “actually getting bigger,” he said.
“Why have they got bigger? Obviously, to get more explosives on board,” Wright said, adding that Ukraine “would clearly like” to take out another target like the Moskva — the flagship of the Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet, which sank in April last year after it was hit by Ukrainian missiles.
“I mean, that’s clearly where they’re going. They want to take out one of these,” Wright said.
Last week, Ukraine showed off its new sea drone for the first time, which packs hundreds of pounds of explosives, CNN reported.
The Ukrainian pilot of the drone told CNN that it had been successful in stifling the Russian Navy’s movements.
“These are faster than anything else in the Black Sea,” he told CNN. “Russia’s equipment is from the 20th Century, and ours is from the 21st.”
Wright said the drone is a “robotic boat that is essentially improvised and can easily hurtle itself against these vast Cold War ships and things in the Black Sea.”
A Ukranian sea drone was also used last month to successfully damage the Kerch Bridge, according to CNN. The bridge was a key supply route between Russia and Crimea, which was annexed by Moscow in 2014.