This time, the Ukrainian military video “Russian battleship was hit by our maritime drone”

Regarding the results of the Ukrainian naval drone attack on the Russian Black Sea Fleet intelligence ship Ivan Khrus on the 24th, Russia and Ukraine are arguing against each other, saying they “repulsed” and “hit” each other.

On the 25th, the Russian Ministry of Defense released a short video of destroying one of them, saying, “We repulsed all three Ukrainian maritime drone attacks the previous day.” Russia said on the 24th that it was attacked by three Ukrainian maritime drones in the waters 140 km northwest of the Bosphorus Strait in the Black Sea. At the time, the Russian warship was on a mission to protect the Turk Stream and Blue Stream gas pipelines in the Turkiye economic zone. The two gas pipelines are subsea gas pipelines connecting Russia and Turkey.

However, on the 25th, the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine posted on Twitter a video of a Ukrainian military maritime drone rushing to avoid a shell fired by the Ivan Kurs and just before colliding with the battleship. Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense tweeted, “The meeting of the Russian reconnaissance ship Ivan Kurs and Ukrainian drones is truly ‘a perfect match’.”

The battleship shown in the video released by the Ukrainian military is the Ivan Kurs. So, if the claims of the Ukrainian military are correct, the Russian Ministry of Defense may have only released footage of the drones destroyed from among the three maritime drones. However, with both sides engaged in distorted information warfare, it is not known which claim is true.

The Ivan Kurs is an intelligence gathering ship belonging to the Russian Black Sea Fleet, and is a very new battleship that entered service in 2018. The BBC has withheld independent judgment as to which side of the story is correct. CNN broadcast reported that “it appears to have been hit, but the extent of damage to the battleship is unknown.”