Ukrainian drones sink Russian landing ship

FE Team | Published: February 14, 2024 22:10:42

File photo of Russian amphibious ship Caesar Kunikov

CRIMEA, Feb 14 (BBC/Reuters): A big Russian amphibious ship, the Caesar Kunikov, has sunk off the coast of Russian-occupied Crimea, according to Ukraine's armed forces. Powerful explosions were heard early on Wednesday, according to local social media, which suggested the landing ship was hit south of the town of Yalta.
Ukraine's intelligence directorate released video of what it said were Magura V5 sea drones striking the ship. Ukraine has repeatedly hit Russia's Black Sea fleet in occupied Crimea. Satellite images last year showed much of the fleet had left the peninsula for the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk.
Ahead of a Nato ministerial meeting in Brussels, the secretary general of the Western defensive alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, said Ukrainian forces had won a "great victory" in recent months, inflicting "heavy losses" on the Black Sea fleet that had opened a corridor for Ukrainian grain exports.
Russia's full-scale war in Ukraine is due to enter its third year next week and Ukraine's armed forces chief has admitted the situation is "extremely complex and tense".
Col Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, who was appointed commander-in-chief last week, visited the front line on Wednesday and promised that units trying to prevent Russian troops from capturing the flashpoint town of Avdiivka would be reinforced.
Avdiivka is almost empty and all but surrounded by Russian forces and one of the soldiers defending it said earlier that the situation there was critical. "We are doing everything possible to prevent the enemy from advancing deep into our territory," he wrote on social media.
Russia's airstrikes kill 3,
injure 13 in E Ukraine
Russia launched several missile attacks on the town of Selydove in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region overnight, killing three people, injuring a dozen and damaging a hospital and several apartments, Ukrainian officials said.
"Three civilians were killed (one of them a child)," the press service of the city's military administration said on the Telegram messaging app.
Donetsk Governor Vadym Filashkin said on the Telegram that 100 patients were evacuated to hospitals in nearby towns after a wing of the town's hospital was damaged in one of several Russian strikes overnight.
He posted a video of windows blown out, walls torn and rubble inside what appeared to be a medical facility, with patients sitting or lying in beds.