This Friday, Ukraine carried out an attack using drones on the Russian naval base in Novorossiysk, in the Black Sea. In response, Russia said it repelled around 10 airstrikes on annexed Crimea, where kyiv has stepped up strikes for the past three weeks.

A source within the Ukrainian security services, the SBU, confirmed to AFP their “involvement in the drone attack” which targeted this base in the south-west of Russian territory. She authenticated a video showing a naval drone approaching a warship at high speed, before the transmission cut off shortly before impact. The Russian Ministry of Defense, meanwhile, referred to an operation by the Ukrainian armed forces using “two unmanned boats”.

The naval drones “were visually detected and destroyed by fire” from Russian ships, the ministry said, adding in a separate statement that it had also shot down 13 aerial drones over Crimea, adding that there were no had no casualties or damage. This is the first attack of its kind against Novorossiysk, a major oil port and terminus of an oil pipeline of about 1,500 km from the oil fields of western Kazakhstan and Russian regions north of the sea. Caspian. Most Kazakh oil for export passes through this pipe.

The Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC), which operates the pipeline, said in a statement that no damage was reported and that oil continued to flow normally aboard vessels docked in the port, after a brief ban on movement of buildings in the area.

Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, whose main base is in Sevastopol, Crimea, has been targeted several times since Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine began in February 2022, but attacks have escalated in recent years. weeks. On Tuesday, Russia claimed to have foiled a strike by three Ukrainian naval drones against patrol boats 340 kilometers southwest of Sevastopol. A similar operation had taken place a week earlier.

“What’s going on in the Black Sea? Drones are changing the rules of the game,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak commented on X (ex-Twitter) on Friday, adding that they “destroy the value of the Russian fleet.” Kiev, which launched a counter-offensive in early June to retake the territories conquered by Moscow, with modest progress so far, proclaims its intention to recover Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014.

Several drone attacks had already been launched against this peninsula at the end of July. On Sunday, the Russian authorities in Crimea notably claimed to have destroyed 25 of these devices. Since withdrawing last month from an agreement that allowed Ukraine to export its grain, Russia has been bombarding the Odessa region on the Black Sea.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, for his part, visited the area of ????the military operation in Ukraine to inspect a command post and meet with high-ranking officers, Moscow said. Mr. Shoigu was presented with a report on the current situation at the front and “thanked the commanders and [other] military personnel […] for successful offensive actions” in the Lyman area in eastern China. Ukraine, the Russian military said in a statement, without specifying when the move took place.

President Volodymyr Zelensky admitted on Thursday evening that the Ukrainian counteroffensive was difficult, citing “very heavy” fighting in the key eastern areas of Lyman, Bakhmout and Avdiivka but also on the southern front.

He believes, however, that “whatever the enemy does, it is the Ukrainian army that dominates”. In 2022, Ukraine recaptured swaths of territory around Kherson (South) and Kharkiv (North-East) after rapid counter-offensives. But Ukrainian forces now face entrenched and reinforced Russian defensive positions for months.

Ukraine has warned that its current counter-offensive could be long and urged its allies to send more weapons.