Five Magura V5 drones hit the Russian patrol ship Sergei Kotov in a single overnight attack near the Kerch Strait, Ukraine’s military intelligence service said on March 5, 2024. One struck the stern. The others hit the ship’s two sides. Ukrainian officials said the vessel sank.
The Kotov, a Project 22160 ship, was valued at approximately $65 million, according to Ukrainian officials. The War Zone put its displacement at around 1,965 tons and its length at about 300 feet. It carried roughly 40 crew members, and their fate was not known when the first reports came out. HUR official Andriy Yusov said: “there are dead and wounded. However, there is a possibility that part of the crew could have evacuated.”
A drone built to reach far
The Magura V5 is Ukrainian-made. The War Zone described a boat about 18 feet long with waterjet propulsion and a range of 450 nautical miles. It can haul a 705-pound payload at 22 knots, and bursts to 42 knots. Those numbers explain how a craft that small can travel from a Ukrainian-held coast to a ship parked off Crimea.
Video released by the intelligence service showed repeated explosions as the Kotov went down. Follow-up drones went after the same damaged area, the footage suggested, to finish the job. Pro-Kremlin channels posted a second clip with gunfire audible nearby, apparently from the ship trying to defend itself.
Not the first
RFE/RL pointed out that Kyiv had made similar claims a month earlier. In February 2024, Ukraine said it destroyed the landing ship Tsezar Kunikov and the corvette Ivanovets, both reportedly with comparable Magura V5 technology.
Russia did not officially comment on the Kotov claim, though the Rybar war blog, which is aligned with Russia’s Defense Ministry, acknowledged the ship’s destruction. Residents in the Crimean area reported hearing multiple explosions on March 5, and the Kerch Bridge was temporarily closed. Reports differed on location; some suggested the attack happened in Feodosia port.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy put the message plainly: “Ukraine has proved what we are capable of, what our strength is capable of.” Russian forces, he said, have no safe harbor in the Black Sea.
Ukraine has “very little in the way of conventional naval vessels,” as The War Zone noted, so the drones carry the fight. Officials said the Kotov had “joined the Moskva,” the Black Sea Fleet flagship sunk in April 2022. The aims they cite include forcing Russia from Crimea and protecting commercial shipping routes for grain exports.
Sources
- Russian Patrol Vessel 'Sunk' Off The Coast Of Occupied Crimea (RFE/RL)
- Ukrainian Drone Boats Sink Russian Navy Patrol Ship (The War Zone)
