Ukraine’s drones ‘destroy’ Russian patrol boats in Black Sea

Ukraine on Monday claimed that its drones destroyed and sank two Russian patrol boats near the Black Sea’s Snake Island where Ukrainian soldiers refused to accept Moscow’s demands to surrender at the start of its invasion.

“Two Russian Raptor boats were destroyed at dawn today near Snake Island,” Ukraine’s defence ministry said in a statement distributed on social media, sharing a grainy black and white ariel footage showing an explosion on a small military vessel.

“The Bayraktars are working,” Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, the commander in chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, was cited as saying in the statement, referring to Turkish-made military drones.

There was no immediate reaction from Moscow to the claim.

What are Raptor patrol boats?

These can carry up to three crews and 20 personnel. They are usually equipped with machine guns and used in reconnaissance or landing operations.

Snake Island became a symbol of Ukrainian resistance after a radio exchange went viral in which Ukrainian soldiers rebuffed demands from a crew of a Russian warship to surrender.

The Russian ship involved, the Moskva, sank in the Black Sea in mid-April following what Moscow said was an explosion on board. Ukraine said it had hit the warship with missiles.

Meanwhile, people fleeing besieged Mariupol described weeks of bombardments and deprivation as they arrived on Monday in Ukrainian-held territory, where officials and relief workers anxiously awaited the first group of civilians freed from a steel plant that is the last redoubt of Ukrainian fighters in the devastated port city.

Video posted online by Ukrainian forces showed elderly women and mothers with small children climbing over a steep pile of rubble from the sprawling Azovstal steel plant and eventually boarding a bus.

More than 100 civilians from the plant were expected to arrive in Zaporizhzhia, about 230 kilometres northwest of Mariupol, on Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said.