Vladimir Putin’s boasts of imminent victory in Ukraine fell flat Thursday as an overnight drone attack took out three warships on Russian territory.
Ukraine’s General Staff announced that its forces had struck at least three Russian naval vessels stationed at the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, according to the Kyiv Post.
The outlet confirmed that the Wednesday attack had hit the small minesweeper Zheleznyakov, the Admiral Essen frigate, and the large landing ship Pyotr Morgunov—all multimillion-dollar vessels.
Production costs for the Admiral Essen frigate range from $450 to $500 million, while the Project 11711 Pyotr Morgunov costs an estimated $160 million.
The exact procurement cost for the Project 12660 Zheleznyakov is unclear, but the smaller Project 12700 minesweeper ship costs roughly $70 million, according to an insurance contract obtained by TASS.
The Ukrainian military also said it struck fuel storage facilities located at a port in southern Russia’s Krasnodar region, as well as a Russian port on the Caspian Sea, the Kyiv Post reported.
Ukraine struck the Makhachkala Commercial Sea Port, located along the Caspian Sea in the Russian Republic of Dagestan, in a separate overnight operation, causing a fire at the facility, the General Staff said.
The Ukrainian military classified the ice-free deep-water port as a significant transportation and logistics hub that Moscow uses to evade Western sanctions and move military supplies between Russia and Iran. The Kyiv Post said the military’s claims about the cargo couldn’t be independently verified.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced Thursday that military forces had carried out strikes on several Russian infrastructure targets over the past 24 hours, including sites in the Moscow, Voronezh, Astrakhan, and Bryansk regions.
The strikes stretched as far as Siberia, marking Ukraine’s deepest inside Russia since the war began.
“Russia continues its daily terror against Ukraine. And every day, it receives a just response,” Zelensky wrote in a post on X.
Ukraine’s offensive into Moscow has forced Russians to protect themselves, with some citizens adding protective sheets over their windows to shield them from Ukrainian drone blasts.
“These are unsettled times for us right now, and I decided to protect my family,” Yuri, a Russian citizen, told Reuters.
