Ukraine said it has carried out its first-ever successful drone attack on a Russian port in the Caspian Sea.
The strike hit the terminal at Kaspiysk on Wednesday, 1,500 km (932 miles) from the frontline of the war with Russia, Bloomberg reported.
The west coast terminal is also a Russian naval base.
Several ships, including missile carriers, were damaged in the attack on Kaspiysk, according to an official in Ukraine’s military intelligence service who asked not to be named.
Damage could not be independently verified.
OSINTtechnical posted footage to X of what it claimed was a drone flying low into the port before striking the quayside in a ball of smoke and flames.
“This morning, Ukrainian attack drones successfully struck Russia’s Caspian Sea flotilla in the port of Kaspiysk, over 1,000 km behind the frontline,” the open-source intelligence company said.
The city, in Russia’s Republic of Dagestan, is home to part of the country’s Caspian Sea fleet.
Russia’s Tass state news agency cited local authorities as saying the airport in the regional capital Makhachkala was closed during the attack.
Ukraine has been urging its Western allies to lift restrictions on the use of Western-made weapons for long-range strikes inside Russia.
Domestic drones
The government has managed to produce its own long-range drones, however.
These have been increasingly successful in hitting distance Russian air and naval bases, as well as fuel depots.
Bloomberg tallied the Kaspiysk attack as Ukraine’s fourth long-range strike inside Russia so far this autumn.
In September, a large ammunition depot in Toropets was destroyed, nearly 500 km from Ukraine’s northern border.
A weapons stockpile in Kotluban was also hit. This was 600 km away.
Late last month, drones hit the military production facility in Dzerzhinsk, about 900 km from the border.
