(PresidentialHill.com)- Drone footage reportedly showing a Ukrainian Bayraktar drone shows the craft destroying a Russian Raptor attack craft near Snake Island in the Black Sea.
Ukraine posted a video reportedly showing TB2 UCAV strikes on two Russian Raptor fast-attack craft near Snake Island. The date on the HUD indicates it was from this morning.https://t.co/6IUfCc4YJT pic.twitter.com/i9gKwUYm2o
— Rob Lee (@RALee85) May 2, 2022
According to the Ukrainian Navy, this was one of two Russian patrol vessels destroyed on Monday morning.
In a post on Facebook Ukraine’s Chief of General Staff, Valeriy Zaluzhniy reported that two Raptor-class vessels were destroyed in the dawn attack near Snake Island.
The Russian Raptors were reportedly evacuating Russian military personnel from Snake Island and replacing them with new troops. The high-speed vessels are designed for landing operations, search and rescue, and patrolling. They can travel a maximum distance of 100 miles from base.
A similar Turkish-made Bayraktar unmanned drone was used to destroy the Russian flagship Moskva last month.
In late April, Russia announced the “second phase” of its “special operation” in Ukraine. With its attempt to capture Kyiv failing, Moscow is now focused on gaining complete control of the Donbas region in the east and Ukraine’s southern region. The objective is to give Russia a land bridge to Crimea, the region Russia annexed in 2014.
However, some US officials believe that adding control of the entire south to its territorial objective may be more than Russia can achieve, creating additional logistical problems, like maintaining the flow of supplies of ammunition, food, and fuel – problems that have already dogged Russian forces throughout this invasion.
Just a week into the so-called “second phase,” Russian forces around Donbas have already found themselves split while fighting continues in Mariupol and along the thinly-deployed 250-mile southern front.
