Drone attack targets Russia’s Black Sea Fleet headquarters

A local official in Russian-annexed Crimea says a drone was shot down in the city of Sevastopol.

Published On 20 Aug 202220 Aug 2022

A drone has been shot down over the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in annexed Crimea, a local official said, in the second attempted strike on the command in Sevastopol in less than a month.

“The drone was shot down just above the fleet headquarters” in the city of Sevastopol, city Governor Mikhail Razvojaev wrote on Telegram on Saturday, blaming the attempt on Ukrainian forces.

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“It fell on the roof and caught fire,” he said, adding that there was no significant damage or victim.

The first reported attack came on July 31, when a presumed Ukrainian drone attacked the Black Sea Fleet on Russia’s Navy Day, wounding five people.

Russia also reported Ukrainian drone attacks late on Friday.

Russia’s RIA and Tass news agencies, citing a local official in Crimea, said it appeared Russian anti-aircraft forces had been in action near the western Crimean port of Yevpatoriya on Friday night.

Video footage posted by a Russian website showed what appeared to be a ground-to-air missile hitting a target.

Tass cited a local official as saying Russian anti-aircraft forces knocked down six Ukrainian drones sent to attack the town of Nova Kakhovka, east of the city of Kherson.

Separately, an official in Crimea said defences there had downed an unspecified number of drones over the city of Sevastopol.

“The Ukrainian armed forces treated the Russians to a magical evening,” Serhiy Khlan, a member of Kherson’s regional council disbanded by Russian occupation forces, said.

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The incidents come as Ukraine has recently intensified attacks behind Russian lines in an attempt to disrupt supply lines Moscow uses to sustain its occupation. While Kyiv has been withholding official comment on incidents in Crimea or inside Russia, it has hinted that it was behind them, using long-range weapons or sabotage.

Analysts have said the attacks were made possible by new equipment used by the Ukrainian army and predicted more would occur.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy referred obliquely to the incidents in Crimea in his nightly video address on Saturday, saying there was anticipation in the peninsula ahead of next week’s 31st anniversary of Ukrainian independence from Soviet rule.

“You can literally feel Crimea in the air this year, that the occupation there is only temporary and that Ukraine is coming back,” he said.

Alexandre Vautravers, the editor-in-chief at the Swiss Military Review, said the attacks — which some media outlets said were carried out by Ukrainian special forces and residents sympathetic to Kyiv — have cause