kyiv’s troops innovate militarily, notably thanks to their drones, to compensate for their numerical inferiority and thwart the expected domination of the forces of Moscow.
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After ten weeks of war between unequal armies, the balance of power evokes more and more that between David and Goliath. Ukraine has inflicted a humiliating tactical and symbolic defeat on Russia by destroying, between April 30 and May 8, a dozen military equipment on the island of snakes, located in the Black Sea, 35 km from the Ukrainian coast . On the first day of the Russian invasion, this tiny island of 0.17 km 2 had been the scene of an act of resistance celebrated throughout Ukraine.
On February 24, the cruiser Moskva and the patroller Vassili Bykov had threatened to bomb the island. The commander of the cruiser Moskva had demanded by radio the immediate surrender of the Ukrainian coast guard: “I ask you to lay down your arms and go to avoid a bloodbath and unnecessary deaths. Otherwise, you will be bombed.” The chief Ukrainian coast guard, Roman Gribov, had then responded from TAC to the TAC: “Russian warship, will make you fuck”, sentence that has become the rallying cry against Russian aggression.
unusable island by the Russian fleet
The island was bombed, storm and all the Ukrainian soldiers were taken prisoner. But the continuation turned out to be disastrous for the Russian navy. The Moskva cruiser is sunk on April 14 in a clever attack by two Ukrainian missiles, while the radars of the Russian ship were distracted by at least one Bayraktar drone. These same Turkish manufacturing drones have successively destroyed, from April 30, five batteries of anti -aircraft and anti -annual defenses installed on the island by the Russian army.
In the process, four Raptor landing barges were destroyed as well as a landing barge (SERNA class). The destruction of the anti-aircraft defenses enabled two Ukrainian Su-27 combat aircraft to carry out a raid against buildings occupied by the Russian soldiers on May 7. To top it off, a bayraktar destroyed the next day a mid-8 transport helicopter when he deposited Russian troops on the island, apparently responsible for organizing his evacuation.
Failing to be reconquered by Ukraine, the island of snakes seems in any case unusable for the Russian fleet, which included it in a device ensuring the naval blockade of Ukraine. The episode highlights two realities: Russia is no longer able to ban the sky from enemy aircraft in the south of Ukraine; And the Ukrainian combat aviation is not annihilated, unlike the statements repeated for two months by the Russian Defense Ministry.
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