Kyiv said on Monday that its drones had sunk two Russian patrol boats near the Black Sea Snake Island, where Ukrainian troops had rejected Moscow’s demands to surrender at the start of its invasion.
“Two Russian Raptor boats were destroyed at dawn near Snake Island today,” the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said in a statement on social media.
The Ministry of Defense also released grainy black-and-white aerial footage showing the explosion of a small warship.
A ship allegedly a Russian Raptor boat was destroyed with the help of a Ukrainian Bayraktar drone delivered from Turkey, near Snake Island, Ukraine in this screenshot obtained from a video on social media on May 2, 2022. UKRAINIAN NAVY FORCES
“Bayraktars are working,” Valery Zaluzhni, commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, said in a statement, citing Turkish military drones.
Raptor patrol boats can carry up to three crews and 20 staff. They are usually equipped with machine guns and are used in reconnaissance or landing operations.
Snake Island became a symbol of Ukrainian resistance after the radio exchange went viral, in which Ukrainian soldiers rejected demands by the crew of a Russian warship to surrender.
The involved Russian ship “Moscow” sank in the Black Sea in mid-April after an explosion on board, according to Moscow. Ukraine says it has hit the warship with missiles.
The reported drone strikes come more than two weeks after the Ukrainian military said it had severely damaged one of Russia’s most important warships with a missile strike off Ukraine’s battered southern coast.
Meanwhile, a long-awaited effort to evacuate people from a steel plant in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol has begun, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky said on Sunday.
The operation to remove people from Azovstal’s extensive steel plant was carried out by the ICRC with the UN and in coordination with Ukrainian and Russian officials, an ICRC spokesman told CBS News. Zelensky tweeted that “1st group of about 100 people is already heading to the controlled area” and said that the Ukrainian authorities “are working on the evacuation of other civilians from the plant.”
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