“Two Russian Raptor vessels were destroyed this morning near the island of Snake,” the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said in a statement shared on social media.
The Department of Defense also released black-and-white aerial footage showing an explosion on a small military vessel.
A Russian Raptor allegedly destroyed by the use of a Ukrainian, Turkish Bayraktar drone near Snake Island, Ukraine on this screenshot taken on a social media video on May 2, 2022. UKRAINIAN NAVY
“The Bairaktars are working,” Valery Zaluzny, the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, was quoted as saying in a statement, referring to Turkish-made military drones.
Raptor patrol boats can carry up to three crew members and 20 people. They are usually equipped with machine guns and are used in reconnaissance or landing operations.
Snake Island became a symbol of Ukrainian resistance after a viral radio exchange in which Ukrainian soldiers rejected the demands of the crew of a Russian warship to surrender.
The Russian ship involved, the Moskva, sank in the Black Sea in mid-April following an explosion that Moscow said on board. Ukraine says it has hit the warship with missiles.
The reported drone strikes come more than two weeks after the Ukrainian military said it had severely destroyed one of Russia’s most important warships with a missile strike off the southern coast of Ukraine.
Meanwhile, a long-awaited effort to evacuate people from a steel plant in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol has begun, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday.
The operation to evacuate people from the vast Azovstal steel plant was carried out by the ICRC with the United Nations and in coordination with Ukrainian and Russian officials, an ICRC spokesman told CBS News. Zelensky wrote on Twitter that “the first group of about 100 people is already heading to the controlled area” and said that Ukrainian officials were “working to evacuate other civilians from the factory.”
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