South Front
Click to see full-size image. Source: the Black Sea Fleet channel on Telegram (https://t.me/kchf_ru)
On May 26, Russian intelligence ship Ivan Khurs was seen entering its base in Sevastopol on its own power without any visible damage, just a few days days after it was attacked by Ukrainian unmanned suicide boats.
The Russian Ministry of Defense said on May 24 that the ship was attacked by three suicide boats. The incident took place 140 kilometers northeast of the Bosphorus. The ship was ensuring the safety of the Turkish Stream and Blue Stream gas pipelines in the economic zone of Turkey.
Video footage released by the ministry showed the ship destroying one of the suicide boats with machinge gun fire at close range.
The next day, May 25, Ukrainian sources shared footage showing one of the suicide boats impacting the rare of Ivan Khurs. The lack of any visible damage on the ship suggests that the boat was either damaged when it made the impact, or failed to detonate.
Ivan Khurs, which has a displacement of 4,000 tons, was launched in 2017. It has been in service with the Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet since then.
The ship was mainly designed to conduct patrols and collect signal intelligence. Its armament is limited to four MTPU 14.5 mm marine machine guns and six 9K38 Igla man-portable air-defense systems. Despite this, the crew of the ship was able to repel the well-planned Ukrainian naval attack.
Kiev forces began using unmanned suicide boats against Russian Navy bases and ships a few months after the start of the Russian special military operation in Ukraine. The boats, which are made of commercially-available parts, have so far failed to score any meaningful hit. It is still unclear if Kiev developed the boats on its own, or with help from its Western allies.
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