On June 6, 2024, a special unit of the 9th department of the Main Intelligence Directorate (HUR) of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine carried out a successful strike against a Russian Project 498 “Saturn”/”Proteus” tug near the temporarily occupied Crimea. The Main Intelligence Directorate released video footage of the operation.
With Ukraine’s Navy virtually non-existent, Ukraine employs missiles and the newly-created fleet of various maritime suicide drones to counter Russia’s dominance in the Black Sea. These tactics led to the destruction or severe damage to at least 17 vessels of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, including the sinking of the Moskva, the Fleet’s flagship, early in the all-out war.
According to the intelligence agency, as a result of the operation in the waters of Lake Panske, another vessel belonging to the Russian occupation forces was destroyed. Lake Panske is located between Mizhvodne and Chornomorske in the northeast of occupied Crimea.
The lake is artificially connected to Yarylhach Bay and hosts the port of Chornomorsk.
The Main Intelligence Directorate emphasized that the destructive fire strike was delivered after successfully breaching the line of defensive obstacles set up by the occupiers in the Black Sea waters.
The video show a remote explosion, then a maritime drone sneaks into a breach in the surface boom, protecting the entrance to the harbor, to later target the tug boat.
The Project 498 tugs, known as the Saturn or Proteus type, are a series of harbor tugboats with twin controllable pitch propellers in independently controlled rotating nozzles. These tugs have been used as harbor tugboats by various civilian port services and naval base support services.
Earlier, on 30 May, the HUR had struck four Russian KS-701 Tunets boats with Magura V5 drones, destroying two of them.
Read also:
- HUR: Ukrainian sea drones sink two Russian naval boats (video)
- Media: Russia withdraws two Black Sea Fleet’s missile corvettes from Sevastopol (photos)
- UK intel: Successful Ukrainian strike removes Russian Kalibr missile threat in Black Sea
- Ukraine destroys Tsyklon, Russia’s last surface Kalibr missile ship in occupied Crimea
- UK intel: Russia improved naval infrastructure in Novorossiysk, where it relocated its ships from Sevastopol away from Ukraine’s strikes
- Ukraine destroyed or disabled a third of Russia’s Black Sea warships – Ukrainian Navy
