Bogomaz said in his post that air defenses
"destroyed two aircraft-type drones" over the region’s Karachevsky
District.
According to Bogomaz, there was no damage
as a result of the shoot-downs, and no casualties. Russia typically claims that
all drones launched against it are destroyed before reaching their targets.
Ukraine typically denies launching drones
at targets in Russian territory, but drones of known Ukrainian types have been
spotted in the skies in many parts of European Russia, as far as the Russian
capital Moscow.
In one of the latest attacks, Moscow was struck
by exploding drones on July 30. In particular, the IQ Quarter building in the
Moscow-City financial district in western Moscow, where the offices of several
Russian ministries are located, was damaged.
Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said sameoffice building was hit again on the night of Aug. 1 as Moscow again came under
attack by drones
Then, in yet another attack overnight on
Aug. 4, two sea drones attacked the Russian port of Novorossiysk on the Black
Sea, in Russia’s Krasnodarsky Krai region. As a result of the attack, a large Russian
amphibious assault ship, the Olenegorsky Gornyak, was damaged.
Video of the nighttime attack circulating
later on social media apparently taken by a camera onboard the drone showed it
rushing towards the Russian warship. The video cuts out just as the drone
reaches the port (left) side of the vessel.
After dawn, video and pictures of the
Olenegorsky Gornyak showed it listing heavily to port, and under tow by Russian
tug boats. It was docked at the Russian naval base in Novorossiysk, still
listing to port. It appeared from the video and pictures of the vessel that several
compartments had been flooded.
Just a day later, on Aug. 5, an explosion boomed
across the Kerch Strait, between Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula
and Russia. It later emerged that the blast was the sound of an attack by a sea
drone on Russia’s SIG tanker, which was being used to transport fuel for
Russian troops.
Video similar to the one showing the attack
on the Olenegorsky Gornyak soon started circulating in social media. In it, the
drone’s onboard camera shows it alongside the bow of the Russian tanker, before
it circles round and apparently hits the vessel below the bridge.
Russian sources later reported a breach to
the tanker’s hull, flooding of the engine room and damage to the tanker’s
bridge, with photographs of the damage also starting to circulate on social
media.
The Russian merchant shipping authority
said nobody was injured in the attack, the hull breach was patched, and that
the tanker was not in danger of sinking.
Since then, Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary
of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, has stated that Ukrainian
unmanned aerial vehicles and naval drones will continue to show excellent
results, and the military-industrial complex will “expand its capabilities to
inflict heavy losses” on Russian invasion forces.