Ukrainian drones had sunk two Russian patrol boats near the Black Sea’s Zmiiny isle (Snake Island), the Ukrainian resistance’s symbol after soldiers there rebuffed Russian demands to surrender, Ukraine’s defense ministry said Monday.
Referring to Turkish-made military drones, the commander in chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, pointed out that the Bayraktars are working.
Berlin-based East European expert Sergej Sumlenny also noted in a tweet, quoting Oleksii Honcharenko, that Ukrainian TB-2 Bayraktar assault drones destroyed two Russian gun-boats near Snake isle, close to Odesa.
The United States has, meanwhile, warned that Russia warned that Moscow was preparing imminently to annex both Lugansk and neighboring Donetsk with the Lugansk governor expecting the battles to intensify ahead of 9 May, the day Russia annually celebrates the 1945 surrender of Nazi Germany to allied forces.
Moscow has launched a fresh, heavy assault on Monday on the critical Ukrainian port of Odesa whose city council informed that a residential building housing five people was hit in the attack, killing a 15-year-old boy, and putting 17- year-old girl in hospital with a shrapnel wound.
The pressure on Odesa, a celebrated cultural hub, and a crucial port on the Black Sea, has been stepped up after Russia failed to take Ukraine’s capital Kyiv so it shifted its invasion toward the largely Russian-speaking areas.
It appears that Russia’s strategy is to take entire Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea, linking these territories with the Moldovan region of Transnistria it controls since 1990 and where it has troops.
Citing Ukrainian intelligence, the adviser to the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, Anton Gerashchenko, warned that Russia will try to open a new front from Moldova which could be easily taken over and used to threaten Odesa from the West.
However, other experts believe Moscow lacks the capacity to invade Moldova and that only if Odesa falls will the country be at risk.
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