Ukraine has released footage of successfully launching an attack on Russian naval base, in an attempt to refute Kremlin’s account of having repelled the attack.
The footage in question was recorded from a camera onboard a surface drone. “The video shows how a surface drone of the SBU, saturated with 450 kilograms of TNT, attacks an enemy ship with about 100 crew members on board,” a source said, according to Daily Beast.
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Here is the video:
The footage is grainy and black-and-white. However, it seems to show the bow of the vessel sailing toward the port side of a large ship. The vessel did not seem to be intercepted at any point in the footage and inched closer and closer to the ship till the footage cut to static. It is presumed that at the point the footage cuts to static, the vessel and the landing ship had made contact.
A Ukrainian official told Interfax that the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and the Ukrainian Navy had conducted the operation. As a result of the successful operation, a Russian landing ship named Olenegorsky Gornyak had sustained damaged. The source also added that the ship “suffered a serious hole and is currently unable to perform its combat tasks.”
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Corroborating Ukraine’s official account, several videos which began circulating on Friday on social media showed the same landing ship being towed following the attack. The ship was seen leaning heavily to the port side as it is dragged across the water.
Meanwhile, before the footage was released by Ukraine, Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed Friday that its ships had “repelled an attack” by Ukraine on its naval base. “Tonight, the Armed Forces of Ukraine, using two crewless boats, attempted to attack the Novorossiysk naval base,” a source in the ministry told the TASS news agency. “In the course of repelling the attack, crewless boats were visually detected and destroyed by fire from the standard weapons of Russian ships guarding the outer raid of the naval base.”
It is not known at the moment if there were any casualties in the attack. According to The Associated Press, Veniamin Kondratiev, the governor of the Krasnodar region where the naval base is located, said no one had been hurt.