Russia foils major Ukraine attack on Putin’s prized possession

The Russian military on Friday said it had intercepted and destroyed a group of Ukrainian vessels headed toward the Crimean Peninsula.

The vessels reportedly included a speedboat with a landing force of Ukrainian soldiers as well as seven unmanned sea drone boats.

“On November 17, during an air patrol in the southwestern part of the Black Sea, seven unmanned boats and a Willard-type speedboat with a landing group of the Ukrainian Armed Forces were discovered heading towards the Crimean Peninsula. All detected targets were destroyed from the standard weapons of the naval aviation of the Black Sea Fleet,” the Russian Ministry of Defense said in a statement.

Russia’s claim that it had thwarted an attack by Ukraine on Crimea, which could not be independently verified by Newsweek, comes after multiple high-profile attacks on Russian targets on the peninsula and its ports on the Black Sea. These attacks have most often involved drones or missiles, but Kyiv’s military has also successfully used troops for commando raids in Crimea.

Russian President Vladimir Putin took Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 following a short military invasion, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has vowed to reclaim the region. Putin and other Kremlin officials have maintained Crimea belongs to Russia, and they have declared returning the territory to Ukraine would not be part of any peace negotiations.

RT, a Kremlin-controlled media outlet, reported the failed attack on Friday after Russian naval aviation detected the Ukrainian vessels during a patrol in the southwestern area of the Black Sea.

“The vessels were promptly dispatched by onboard armaments of the aircraft,” RT wrote.

Newsweek reached out to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense via email for comment Friday.

Russia has also found success elsewhere in its war on Ukraine over the past day. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) think tank on Friday wrote that Putin’s forces conducted offensives along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, west and southwest of Donetsk City, in the Donetsk-Zaporizhzhia Oblast border area and in western Zaporizhzhia Oblast.

The ISW said Moscow’s military “advanced in several sectors of the front,” including in its efforts near Avdiivka and Bakhmut. While Bakhmut has been the site of fierce fighting for roughly a year, Russia has made a concentrated effort in recent months to capture control of Avdiivka.

The ISW said footage showed “Russian forces marginally advanced in the industrial zone southeast of Avdiivka” on Thursday and “made confirmed advances” in other operations near the Donetsk settlement.