Ukraine on Monday claimed its forces had destroyed two Russian 'Raptor' class patrol boats in the Black Sea.
“Two Russian Raptor-class boats were destroyed at dawn today near Zmiinyi (Snake) Island,” Chief of General Staff Valeriy Zaluzhniy wrote on Telegram. The Ukrainian armed forces' Facebook account claimed the attack on the two boats involved the use of the Turkish-built Bayraktar TB2 armed drones.
The video footage, apparently from a drone's sensors, showed the boats exploding. The time stamp on the video footage showed the attack happened early on Monday.
The Raptor class boats are small patrol craft that displace around 20 tonnes and are meant to patrol coastal stretches and straits. These boats, which were introduced into the Russian Navy barely a decade ago, are primarily armed with machine guns.
The attacks on the two Raptor class boats come amid disputes over the efficacy of the TB2 drones in the operations against Russia. The drones had achieved an iconic status in the war, being used to hit Russian armoured vehicles and air defence systems. The TB2 was, reportedly, also involved in the sinking of the Russian warship Moskva earlier this month. Ukraine claimed it had attacked the Moskva with anti-ship missiles after the ship was 'distracted' by a TB2 drone. Some reports claim a TB2 was involved in an attack on two oil depots on Bryansk in Russia last week. The Bryansk strike was significant as it involved Ukraine's military penetrating 150km into Russian airspace.
Some analysts have claimed the TB2 has had limited success in the war, given its slow speed and light armament, consisting primarily of small laser-guided bombs. According to the Oryx blog, which has tracked the losses of equipment on both sides, Ukraine has lost around seven TB2 drones in the conflict so far. However, other analysts claimed Russia has used the same wreckage of downed TB2 drones repeatedly to inflate Ukrainian losses.
Meanwhile, Ukraine's Ministry of Defence on Monday claimed that the number of Russian service personnel killed in the conflict had reached 23,800. Ukraine claims to have destroyed 194 Russian fixed-wing aircraft, 155 helicopters, 1,048 tanks, eight naval boats and 271 UAVs.