Ukraine Attacks Russian Navy Ship with Kamikaze USV

Russian Navy’s Ropucha I-class landing ship was spotted close to the Black Sea while being towed by two tugs after being struck by Ukraine's explosive-laden drone boat.

The attack reportedly took place in Novorossiysk, a major Russian port on the eastern coast of the Black Sea, sits roughly 420 miles from Ukrainian-held shores.

Russian Ministry of Defense acknowledges that the ship was attacked, but claimed that it was repelled with Russian warships destroying Ukrainian USVs.

A video showing the now-damaged Project 775 warship “Olenegorskiy Gornyak (SDK-91)” near the shore is being circulated on Twitter. An explosive payload can be seen detonating in an earlier video purportedly taken from the drone boat as it approached the landing ship from the port side.

The damage on the port side of the ship appears to be significant, causing ship to roll more than 40-50 degrees to the port side.

The Ukrainian USV appears similar to a new type of drone boat that was revealed only days ago, The Drive wrote. The newly-unveiled USV is “a low-visibility gray boat that has gimballed and staring optical sensors allowing for remote control. It can reportedly carry a big 300-kilogram warhead out to a range of 800 kilometers... The satellite communications array seen at the rear of the boat is also new. It is widely assumed that Starlink was used on earlier Ukrainian drone boats, but the company began limiting access to certain areas and other parameters to negate the systems with weapons like drone boats. This new satcom array likely gets around those limitations by using another provider.”