Ukraine has combined unmanned sea drones with special forces raids to erode Russia’s grip on the Black Sea, striking warships, recapturing offshore platforms, and targeting strategic infrastructure. These operations, carried out primarily by Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence directorate (DIU) and the Security Service (SBU), have forced Russian naval assets to reposition and raised questions about the long-term viability of Moscow’s Black Sea Fleet presence. The campaign spans surface drone attacks, underwater strikes, and amphibious boarding operations, each building on the last to create compounding pressure across the theater.
What is verified so far
The most clearly documented episode in this campaign is the recapture of the Boyko Towers, a cluster of offshore oil and gas platforms on the Black Sea shelf that Russia seized in March 2014. DIU special forces used small craft to approach and board the installations known as Petro Hodovalets, Ukraine, Tavrida, and Sivash, regaining control after nearly a decade of Russian occupation. DIU reported that its personnel captured stocks of unguided aviation rockets and destroyed Russian equipment left on site.
Video released by DIU with English subtitles shows the sequence of the approach and boarding, including helicopter overflights and close-quarters movement on the platforms themselves. This footage, combined with geolocatable visual details, provides a relatively high-confidence record of the raid. Among the equipment claimed as trophies was a Neva radar system, along with additional rocket stocks, details echoed in specialist defense reporting that also noted reactions from Russian state media.
On the maritime drone front, one of the most consequential strikes came on the night of March 4-5, 2024, when MAGURA V5 surface drones hit the Russian patrol ship Sergey Kotov near the Kerch Strait. DIU later stated that the ship was destroyed and reported several crew casualties, framing the operation as proof that relatively small, remotely piloted craft could neutralize a modern warship operating under air-defense cover. Although independent battle-damage imagery remains limited, the available video clips show multiple impacts and secondary explosions consistent with a severe hit.
The SBU then extended the concept below the waterline. In an operation against Novorossiysk, a primary Black Sea Fleet hub, the service employed its Sub Sea Baby underwater drone against what it described as a Project 636.3 Kilo-class submarine. The SBU said the boat was critically damaged and rendered inoperable in a joint action with the Ukrainian Navy. Video of the strike, compiled from hacked harbor CCTV feeds, was later circulated by Ukrainian officials and analyzed by outlets such as maritime-focused media, which noted the apparent blast and subsequent listing of the vessel at its berth.
The technical evolution of Ukraine’s unmanned systems is central to this campaign. In a demonstration for the Associated Press, the SBU showcased an upgraded Sea Baby surface drone with a claimed range of 1,500 kilometers and payload capacity of up to 2,000 kilograms. According to the service, some variants carry a rocket launcher and stabilized turret, incorporate AI-assisted targeting, can deploy small aerial drones, and are designed to be recovered and reused after missions. If these specifications are borne out in combat conditions, they would allow Ukraine to threaten military targets across nearly the entire Black Sea basin from its own coastline or river estuaries.
Beyond warships and submarines, Ukrainian services have also targeted strategic infrastructure that underpins Russian military logistics. On June 3, the SBU carried out an underwater special operation against the Crimean Bridge, a critical link between Russia’s Krasnodar region and the occupied peninsula. According to SBU head Vasyl Maliuk, the first explosive device detonated at 04:44 with a blast equivalent to roughly 1,100 kilograms of TNT. He said the mission had been in preparation for months and left the bridge in an emergency condition, describing it as the third successful strike on the structure but the first executed entirely from underwater.
These offensive actions unfold against a backdrop of Russian pressure on civilian shipping. In August 2023, UK intelligence disclosed that Russia had targeted a civilian cargo vessel in the Black Sea, launching two Kalibr cruise missiles from a Black Sea Fleet carrier toward a grain ship approaching a Ukrainian port. British officials said both missiles were intercepted but that the attempted strike affected roughly 280,000 tonnes of grain capacity and associated port infrastructure and export facilities. Ukrainian officials have repeatedly framed their drone and special forces campaign as, in part, an effort to degrade the fleet’s ability to threaten commercial corridors and global food supplies.
Ukraine has also paired these kinetic operations with economic and legal pressure. The country’s National Coordination Center for Sanctions maintains a public portal that tracks measures against Russian entities and individuals tied to the war effort, including maritime and logistics actors. The database, available through the coordination center’s website, is used by Ukrainian agencies to advocate for tighter restrictions on companies servicing Russian shipping and energy projects. In parallel, DIU hosts a separate platform cataloging individuals and firms it considers complicit in aggression, offering detailed profiles on the sanctions list and encouraging foreign partners to align their own measures.
What remains uncertain
Despite the volume of imagery and official statements, significant aspects of this campaign remain unverified by independent sources. Most detailed damage assessments originate from Ukrainian government bodies, particularly DIU and the SBU. For the Sergey Kotov, for example, open-source analysts have geolocated some strike footage but have not been able to conclusively determine whether the ship sank or was later recovered and towed for repairs. Russian authorities have not released crew manifests, after-action reports, or port imagery that would allow outside observers to confirm Ukrainian claims about the scale of destruction or casualties.
The same applies to the reported Kilo-class submarine strike in Novorossiysk. While the CCTV-derived video suggests a powerful explosion alongside a moored vessel, there has been no third-party inspection or high-resolution commercial satellite imagery published that clearly shows the submarine’s condition after the blast. The SBU’s assertion that the boat was “critically damaged” and “put out of action” therefore remains a one-sided claim. Russian military channels have acknowledged incidents at Black Sea bases in general terms but have not provided specific, verifiable counter-accounts of this event.
Questions also surround the real-world performance of the upgraded Sea Baby and other long-range unmanned platforms. The 1,500-kilometer range and 2,000-kilogram payload figures demonstrated to journalists have not been documented in a disclosed combat mission at full specification. It is unclear whether the drones can reliably achieve maximum range under contested conditions, including electronic warfare, rough sea states, and active countermeasures. Similarly, the extent to which AI-assisted targeting and onboard launch of aerial drones have been integrated into live operations has not been independently confirmed.
Even in the case of the Crimean Bridge, where visible structural damage has been documented after prior attacks, the precise impact of the June 3 underwater strike remains a matter of interpretation. Ukrainian officials describe the bridge as being in an emergency state and emphasize the disruption to Russian military logistics. Russian authorities, by contrast, have highlighted ongoing repair work and periodic traffic resumptions, without providing transparent engineering assessments that outside experts could scrutinize. Without such data, estimates of reduced load capacity, increased maintenance burden, or long-term vulnerability are necessarily approximate.
Finally, the broader strategic effect of Ukraine’s Black Sea campaign is still unfolding. Russian warships have adjusted their basing patterns and patrol routes, and some vessels have reportedly shifted further east or sought shelter in ports perceived as safer. Yet there is limited open-source visibility into the operational tempo of the Black Sea Fleet, its remaining missile inventory, or the degree to which it can still threaten Ukrainian coastal cities and grain corridors. Until more comprehensive evidence emerges (from satellite imagery, shipping traffic patterns, or declassified intelligence), assessments of how decisively these raids and drone strikes have reshaped the maritime balance will remain provisional.
What is clear, however, is that Ukraine has demonstrated an ability to reach high-value Russian targets at sea and along key logistics routes using relatively low-cost, domestically developed systems and small-unit raids. The confirmed recapture of the Boyko Towers, the documented use of maritime drones against naval assets, and the visible damage to infrastructure such as the Crimean Bridge collectively show that the Black Sea is no longer a secure rear area for Moscow. The unanswered questions concern not whether Ukraine can strike, but how sustainably, at what scale, and with what long-term consequences for the war’s maritime front.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
