Ukraine released a video claiming to have destroyed the large Serna-type Russian ship in an air strike. In the chilling black and white footage, human figures can be seen moving around the ship moments before it was engulfed in flames. Ukrainian official Anton Gerashchenko later said: “Enemy units remaining on Snake Island remain without air cover and will be destroyed and burned out like cockroaches or locusts.”
The attack comes just days after Russia lost two fast-attack Raptor crafts just off Snake Island following a devastating Ukrainian drone strike, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine claimed.
Russia has been suffering significant equipment losses ever since the start of the war on February 24, with several videos emerging of both tanks and helicopters being destroyed in successful drone strikes.
New footage shared by Ukraine’s Defence forced has now suggested Moscow suffered further losses in the Black Sea after another drone attack.
Footage shared on the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine’s Facebook page appeared to show two Russian Raptor fast-attack craft being blown to smithereens off the coast of Snake Island.
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One of the two boats can be seen sailing as Ukrainian forces target it at a distance from a monitor.
The footage second later shows a considerable conflagration destroying the first ship, with the video later cutting to video of an unmanned drone.
Chief of General Staff Valeriy Zaluzhniy said the boats were destroyed at dawn.
He wrote on Facebook: “Two Russian Raptor-class boats were destroyed at dawn today near Zmiinyi (Snake) Island.”
A fly-past over St Basil’s Cathedral will include supersonic fighters, Tu-160 strategic bombers and, for the first time since 2010, the Il-80 “doomsday” command plane, which would carry Russia’s top brass in the event of a nuclear war, the Defence Ministry said.
In that scenario, the Il-80 is designed to become the roaming command centre for the Russian president. It is packed with technology but specific details are Russian state secrets.
The 69-year-old Kremlin leader has repeatedly likened the war in Ukraine to the challenge the Soviet Union faced when Adolf Hitler’s Nazis invaded in 1941.
“The attempt to appease the aggressor on the eve of the Great Patriotic War turned out to be a mistake that cost our people dearly,” Putin said on February 24 when he announced what he called a special military operation in Ukraine.
“We will not make such a mistake a second time, we have no right.”