“At approximately 11 a.m. Moscow time [0800 GMT], east of Serpents’ Island, an American-made Willard Sea Force speedboat carrying a landing party of the Ukrainian Armed Forces was destroyed by a military aircraft. Russian armies,” the Russian Defense Ministry said on Telegram on Tuesday (August 22nd).
Earlier in the morning, he had already claimed responsibility for the destruction of a Ukrainian reconnaissance vessel which was in a gas production zone under Russian control.
Ukraine, which never details its losses, has said nothing about these incidents.
Attacks in the Black Sea were, for almost a year, relatively few in number, allowing the implementation of an agreement for Ukraine to export its agricultural production, essential to global food security. But Moscow withdrew in July from this arrangement under the aegis of the UN and Turkey, multiplying since the bombardments of the Ukrainian port infrastructures in the Black Sea and on the Danube.
Russia continues its campaign of bombing Ukraine, always claiming to aim for military targets but killing civilians every day. Tuesday, the funeral of victims of a strike on a theater in Cherniguiv are thus planned. Russian territory is increasingly targeted by drones attributed to Ukraine. Early Tuesday, for the fifth day in a row, two craft were shot down over the Moscow region. No casualties have been identified.
On Tuesday morning, police in Krasnogorsk, northwest of the Russian capital, cordoned off the perimeter near debris lying on the ground, according to an AFP photographer at the scene, where several windows of a building appear broken. Moscow’s three major international airports briefly had to halt arrivals and departures. At the end of July and the beginning of August, aircraft had been destroyed above the business district of Moscow causing slight damage to towers. In May, two drones were shot down over the Kremlin.
Military sites were also targeted and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky welcomed in late July that “war is coming to Russian territory”. The Russian regions bordering Ukraine are regularly targeted by artillery fire or brief armed incursions.
