Photo: Efrem Lukatsky Associated Press A Ukrainian brigade uses a multiple rocket launcher to fire on Russian positions Tuesday near Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine.
Victoria Lukovenko – Agence France-Presse to kyiv
10:54 a.m.
- Europe
Ukraine claimed Tuesday that it had destroyed a Russian war patrol near the Crimean peninsula annexed by Russia, a new snub for Moscow in this strategic area of the Black Sea.
kyiv also says it has struck an oil depot in the Russian region of Belgorod, bordering Ukraine. In recent weeks, similar attacks against oil sites have occurred in Russia.
On the Black Sea, the Ukrainian navy claimed that a “special unit” had on the night of Monday to Tuesday “destroyed the most modern Russian patrol boat, the Sergei Kotov”, which had been “ hit by Magura V5 maritime drones”.
The attack occurred “in Ukrainian territorial waters, near the Kerch Strait,” she said, adding that the patrol boat had already been “severely damaged” last September during of a previous attack by Ukrainian forces.
The attack was carried out by Ukrainian military intelligence (GUR) with the cooperation of the navy.
The GUR published a black and white video on Tuesday showing the alleged nighttime attack. In the footage, we can see a naval drone approaching the Sergei Kotov — 94 meters long — then an explosion with a large flame, smoke and debris projected above the ship.
The Russian Defense Ministry has not yet made an official comment on the attack, but Russian military bloggers close to the armed forces have confirmed the strike, with some emphasizing the inability to the Russian navy to defend itself.
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“Occupy symbol”
In two years of war, Kiev's forces managed to force the powerful Russian fleet in the Black Sea to retreat using missiles and maritime drones, allowing the reopening of a maritime corridor to export Ukrainian grain while ignoring threats of bombing.
According to the Ukrainian military in early February, about a third of Russian military ships were “incapacitated” in this area.
“The Russian Black Sea Fleet is a symbol of occupation. It cannot be in Ukrainian Crimea,” commented the head of the Ukrainian presidential administration Andriy Iermak on Telegram on Tuesday, after the announcement of the destruction of the Russian patrol boat.
Crimea, a peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014, is regularly targeted because it is important for the logistics of the Russian army for its operations on the front.
Moreover, in the Russian region of Kursk, “the Gluchkovo railway station was targeted by strikes from Ukraine,” Roman Starovoit, the regional governor, wrote on Telegram, specifying that the attack “did not cause any injuries.”
The Ukrainian Air Force, for its part, indicated that it had intercepted 18 of the 22 Shahed explosive drones launched in the Odessa region by Russia during a new night attack, which did not no victims or destruction.
“Strategic Surge”
On the ground, the Ukrainian army still suffers from a lack of weapons and ammunition to repel Russian attacks, particularly near the town of Avdiïvka, in eastern Ukraine, taken by Moscow's forces mid- February after four months of deadly fighting.
On the subject of aid to Ukraine, French President Emmanuel Macron is in Prague to support a Czech initiative to purchase non-EU munitions for kyiv.
He called on Ukraine's allies to “not be cowardly” in the face of a Russia “that has become unstoppable”, “assuming” to have called for a “strategic surge” by evoking the possibility of 'send Western troops to Ukraine.
He nevertheless assured that he did not want “escalation” with Russia.
In Brussels, the European Commission for its part proposed on Tuesday to finance part of the arms purchases decided jointly by the 27, in order to strengthen defense capabilities on the continent in the face of the Russian threat and to depend less on the United States. Unis.
Finally in Germany, Defense Minister Boris Pistorius attributed recent leaks in the German army on arms deliveries to Kiev to a serious “individual error”, with one of the officers having participated in the meeting via an “unauthorized connection”.