Ukraine said today that it has carried out its first successful drone strike against Russian ships in the Caspian Sea, a body of water that is within over a thousand kilometers from the Ukrainian border, reported France Press.
"For the first time, explosive drones (...) hit enemy ships in the Caspian Sea,”, a source from Ukrainian military intelligence told AFP. It is specified that the target was "about 1,500 kilometers away" from the border.
According to the source, the attack hit the missile boats “Tatarstan“ and “Dagestan” in the Russian Caucasus region.
Local Russian authorities did not confirm that any of the ships were damaged, saying only that a Ukrainian drone had been shot down. “The security regime at civilian and military sites has been tightened,” they said.
Since the beginning of the war, Ukraine has been developing and modernizing its own unmanned aerial vehicles, and their range is constantly increasing. However, Kiev's allies still deny it the ability to use Western long-range weapons to strike deep into Russian territory. Ukraine managed to repel the Russian fleet in the Black Sea with the help of drones of its own production, AFP notes.
Russia fired two missiles and 63 explosive-laden drones into Ukraine last night, more than half of which were shot down by air defenses, according to authorities in Kiev.