Ukraine has eliminated Russian soldiers on jet skis along the Dnipro River in a drone strike on Friday, according to a video posted by a Ukrainian news outlet.
Drones are one of the defining features of the more than two-and-a-half years of fighting amid the Russia-Ukraine war. Hundreds of airborne drones zip across the skies above the front lines each day, ticking off tasks ranging from reconnaissance to targeting, as well as kamikaze strikes designed to take out enemy armored vehicles, personnel and positions.
Among the most famous are cheap first-person view (FPV) drones, well known by now for zooming over the battlefield and capturing footage routinely shared online by both Russian and Ukrainian sources. Often, the video feed will cut off sharply as the drone careens toward its target and explodes.
According to a post on X, formerly Twitter, from United24 Media, a video released on Friday shows Ukraine’s Operational Command South eliminating Russian fighters riding a jet ski on the Dnipro River using FPV drones.
“Ukrainian FPV drone operators have eliminated Russian soldiers on jet skis on the Dnipro River,” United24 Media wrote on X alongside a video showing the drone strike.
Newsweek could not independently verify the video and has reached out to the Ukrainian defense ministry via email for comment.
To view the video, click here.
This recent drone strike comes as Ukraine’s drone operations on land, in the air and on the water continue to increase. Throughout the war, Kyiv has said its drone production is on the rise, and new designs almost constantly debut on social media. In late July, a Kyiv defense official said Ukraine was able to produce more than 3 million drones each year, with this propped up by financial support from Ukraine’s international backers.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in February that Kyiv would create a new branch of Kyiv’s military, known as the Unmanned Systems Forces, dedicated exclusively to drone warfare. “Drones, unmanned systems, have proven their effectiveness in battles on land, in the sky and at sea,” the Ukrainian leader said.
Russia’s own industrial capacity is formidable. In December 2023, Samuel Bendett, a drone expert with CNA, a Washington-based nonprofit for research and analyses, told Newsweek that Russian volunteers, as well as state and affiliated manufacturers, had “significantly ramped up” the development of FPV drones and were likely handing off tens of thousands of FPVs to the Russian military each month.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said in mid-September that Russia was planning to increase its overall drone production nearly tenfold in 2024. Around 140,000 UAVs were given to Russia’s military in 2023, he said.
Newsweek has also reached out to Russia defense ministry via email for comment.
Vlada Liberova/Libkos/Getty Images
The latest drone strike follows Putin upping the ante on the Kremlin’s nuclear rhetoric after he announced that Moscow may consider the use of nuclear weapons in response to a massive launch of missiles or drones crossing its state border.
It comes after Russia has said that Kyiv has fired drones into Russian regions bordering Ukraine on Wednesday.
The governor of Russia’s Oryol, Andrei Klychkov, said that a Ukrainian drone had been shot down over the region overnight Wednesday, without providing further details, according to the Astra Telegram channel.
Russia’s Defense Ministry reported that seven drones had been destroyed over the Belgorod, Kursk and Bryansk regions that border Ukraine, although there were no reports of damage. Newsweek has not been able to verify this claim.
Russia, in turn, has continued with its drone strikes targeting Ukrainian infrastructure, with authorities in Kyiv saying that debris from an intercepted drone had damaged a gas pipeline in a residential building overnight Wednesday.
Over 15 drones were spotted near the capital, 10 of which were downed by air defenses, the Kyiv City Military Administration said. An air raid alarm in Ukraine’s capital sounded for five hours with explosions in several of the city’s districts as well as in Kyiv Oblast, according to English-language Ukrainian online newspaper The Kyiv Independent.
