Ukraine's military shared video of the moment it says one of its aerial drones sank a Russian naval vessel

• Video posted by the Ukrainian military purports to show the moment it destroyed a Russian boat.
• The missile strike on a KS-701 patrol boat killed six Russian forces, according to the Ukrainian navy.

A video posted by Ukraine's navy shows the moment that an apparent aerial drone killed a half-dozen Russian service members and destroyed their vessel as they tried to unload on a beach in the Kherson region.

The attack occurred in the northwestern region of the Black Sea, the Ukrainian navy said in a post on Telegram, attributing the strike to its naval aviation unit. It did not identify the means of destruction, but several experts said the missile strike appeared to be carried out by a Bayraktar TB2, a Turkish-made drone that inflicted serious losses on Russia in the early stages of the war.

Ukraine lost most of its navy when Russia illegally annexed Crimea in 2014. But since the 2022 invasion, Kyiv has invested heavily in both aerial and naval drone technology, threatening not just Russian forces — and oil tankers — but the Kerch Bridge.

The release of the video Sunday is likely intended to boost morale as Ukrainian forces are bogged down in a counteroffensive that has cost thousands of lives. Last month, US officials told The New York Times that about 70,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since Russia launched its full-scale invasion last year (compared to about 120,000 Russian soldiers killed in action). Since February 2022, at least 9,500 Ukrainian civilians have also been killed, according to the United Nations.