
Ukraine destroys Russian fighter jet with missile from sea drone in world first, says Kyiv military
Ukraine destroyed a Russian Su-30 fighter jet using a missile fired from a seaborne drone, Ukraine's GUR military intelligence agency said on Saturday, in what it said was the world's first downing of a combat plane by a maritime drone.
Advertisement
Its statement on social media said the fighter had been shot down by a military intelligence unit called Group 13 on Friday over waters near Novorossiysk, a major Russian port city on the Black Sea.
Outmanned and outgunned by its larger, wealthier Russian adversary, Ukraine has turned to drone warfare in the air and at sea as a way to fight back throughout the three years of full-scale war.
Ukraine's seaborne drones, which are much cheaper and smaller than conventional ships, have wrought havoc on Russia's Black Sea fleet.
Ukraine has previously said it shot down a Russian military helicopter in December 2024 using a missile fired from the same type of seaborne drone.
A view from the cockpit of a Russian Su-30 fighter jet during a training mission in January 2022. Photo: AP
On Friday the Russian Su-30 jet was hit by a missile and crashed into the sea near the naval port of Novorossiysk, Ukrainian military intelligence said on Saturday, publishing a video of the alleged launch over the Black Sea.

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Asia Times
16 hours ago
- Asia Times
Counting the cost of a million Russian war casualties
Russian military casualties in the war in Ukraine are expected to reach a million before the end of June. This figure, which is composed of combat-related injuries as well as deaths, reveals that Moscow is prepared to see its soldiers pay a staggeringly high price for Russia to maintain and expand its illegal occupation of Ukrainian territory. The scale of losses since the full-scale invasion in 2022 is a direct result of Russia's 'meat grinder' approach to fighting, which relies on sending waves of troops into enemy fire, sacrificing many so that a few can get through. Vladimir Putin's strategy has allowed Russian forces to make steady – but painfully slow – advances into eastern Ukraine, but at an estimated cost of 53 casualties per square kilometre seized. Russia is now changing the way it is fighting in Ukraine because of the high casualty rates. It is now using small, dispersed detachments because of the loss of large numbers of junior officers. Although replacements are being recruited from the ranks and quickly put through an abbreviated training, these new officers have neither the training nor the experience to command larger formations of soldiers. Large battlefield losses in Ukraine also put more pressure on military recruitment efforts back home in Russia. In the absence of a general mobilization, which Putin has been reluctant to declare, the ministry of defense has had to use creative solutions to deal with the war's insatiable demand for manpower. One response is to return wounded soldiers to combat duty before they have fully recovered. Some Russian soldiers reportedly have complained that they are being forced to return to the front before their medical treatments are finished. CNN reported that Ukrainian drone operators have released video footage appearing to show Russian soldiers on crutches in combat zones. Military recruiters also visit Russia's prisons with the offer of full pardons for those who survive a combat tour. Ukraine's Foreign Intelligence Service says Russia's Ministry of Defense has recruited an estimated 180,000 soldiers using this method, which was introduced by Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin in the summer of 2022. Some of these former prisoners being recruited are reported to be women, although estimates of their numbers are hard to find. The active recruitment of women by the Russian military to serve in Ukraine appears to have been kept quiet because it contradicts the Kremlin's message that military service and the war in Ukraine in particular are the business of men and provide opportunities for Russian men to demonstrate their masculinity. Russia has increasingly turned to its allies North Korea and China to provide it with the soldiers that it needs on the front lines. Earlier this year, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed that at least 155 Chinese troops were fighting for Russia in Ukraine, while North Korea is believed to have suffered approximately 5,000 casualties among the soldiers that Pyongyang has sent to Russia. But by far the most common solution to Russia's chronic shortage of soldiers is for the state to keep increasing the salaries and benefits on offer to civilians who agree to sign contracts to serve in the military. Monthly salaries of 200,000 rubles – more than US$2,000 – are typical, putting combat soldiers in the top 10% of Russia's earners. In addition to high salaries, the families of volunteer or 'contract' soldiers are eligible for benefits such as low-interest mortgages as well as generous compensation payments if the soldier is killed or permanently disabled. In some regions, more than half the social welfare budgets are going to soldiers and their families. This influx of money has transformed the lives of people living in some of Russia's most economically deprived regions. This increased prosperity has bolstered support for Russia's 'special military operation' in Ukraine. But the departure – and, in many cases, permanent loss – of so many men has shifted the demographics of many small communities, which are now populated largely by women, young children and the elderly. Those soldiers who return to villages and small towns with life-changing physical or emotional injuries will have their disability payments, but may struggle to get the medical support that they need from Russia's strained health care system. One category of Ukraine war veterans who have benefited most from their military service are the former prisoners who managed to survive their combat experiences. But one of the consequences of recruiting soldiers from the prisons is that when violent criminals return from the war with full pardons, many will commit new crimes. It is estimated that these former prisoners-turned-soldiers have so far been responsible for nearly 200 murders, sparking outrage among the victims' families. Although Russia has a large population, its human resources are not endless and have been under strain since even before its mass invasion of Ukraine began in 2022, bringing enormous combat losses and seemingly endless demands for more and more soldiers. Russia was already experiencing a demographic crisis. The proportion of society of child-bearing age is low, reflecting a dip in the birth rate in the 1990s. The Covid pandemic increased the mortality rate among Russia's adult population, while hundreds of thousands of young men left Russia in 2022 to avoid military service. A long-term legacy of this war will undoubtedly be a shrinking population, despite the state's efforts to encourage women to have more babies. Even those Russian women who aspire to earn the newly reinstated 'Mother Heroine' award by bearing and raising ten or more children may struggle to find men to father them. But despite the many problems experienced by Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine, those who survive their military service are being promised a golden future. In February 2024, Putin declared that the country's war veterans will be the new elite. Former soldiers are being offered a fast track into political office through the 'Time of Heroes' programme, which provides training, work experience and access to valuable networks. So far, only a small number of veterans have graduated to take up positions of power, but this suggests that the war in Ukraine will continue to shape Russia's political decisions for years to come. Jennifer Mathers is a senior lecturer in international politics at Aberystwyth University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.


RTHK
18 hours ago
- RTHK
Trump channels US residency gambit through new website
Trump channels US residency gambit through new website Donald Trump shows off a sample of his US$5 million Gold Card back in April. File photo: AFP US President Donald Trump has touted a new website for his planned US$5 million US residency permit, saying the waiting list for the golden visa has opened on "Thousands have been calling and asking how they can sign up to ride a beautiful road in gaining access to the Greatest Country and Market anywhere in the World," Trump wrote in a social media post on Wednesday. Trump unveiled the first such visa aboard Air Force One in April, holding a golden prototype that bore his face and promising the special permit would probably be available "in less than two weeks". The visas are not available yet, but the website announced on Wednesday allows those who are interested to submit their name, desired visa and email address under a header that says "The Trump Card is Coming". Trump previously said the new visa, a high-price version of the traditional green card, would bring in job creators and could be used to reduce the US national deficit. The announcement comes as deportation raids are being ramped up across the country, prompting protests, and as Trump's administration faces ongoing lawsuits and accusations of rights violations over its anti-immigration blitz. Trump has said the new card would be a route to highly prized US citizenship. He said in February that his administration hoped to sell "maybe a million" of the cards and did not rule out that Russian oligarchs may be eligible. (AFP)


Asia Times
2 days ago
- Asia Times
Ukraine in a bind as Russia moves into Dnipropetrovsk
The Russian Ministry of Defense announced on Sunday (June 8) that its forces had entered Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk Region, which Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed is part of Russian President Vladimir Putin's buffer zone plan. This was foreseen as early as late August once the Battle of Pokrovsk began, but has been achieved even without capturing that strategic fortress town. Russian forces simply went around it after breaking through the southern Donbass front. This development puts Ukraine in a dilemma. It will now have to simultaneously fortify the Dnipropetrovsk front together with the northern Kharkov and southern Zaporozhye ones to guard against Russia using its new position to launch offensives into any of those three. This could put serious strain on the Ukrainian Armed Forces as they are already struggling to prevent a major breakthrough in the Sumy Region from Kursk. Coupled with a depletion of manpower and questions about continued US military-intelligence aid, this might be enough to collapse the frontlines. To be sure, that scenario has been bandied about many times since the invasion, but it now appears closer than ever. Observers also shouldn't forget that Putin told his US counterpart Donald Trump that he would respond to Ukraine's strategic drone strikes on Russia's strategic nuclear forces earlier this month, which could combine with the abovementioned two factors to achieve this long-desired breakthrough. Of course, the retaliation might just be a symbolic demonstration of force, but it could also be something more significant. Ukraine's best chance of preventing this is for the US to either get Russia to agree to freeze the frontlines or to go on another offensive. A frontline freeze could be achieved through a carrot-and-stick approach, proposing a better resource-centric strategic partnership in exchange for the US imposing crippling secondary sanctions on Russia's energy clients (specifically China and India, with likely waivers for the EU). Alternatively, the US could double down on military-intelligence aid if Russia still refuses. As for launching a new offensive, the 120,000 troops that Ukraine has assembled along the Belarusian border, according to President Alexander Lukashenko last summer, could either cross that frontier and/or one of Russia's internationally recognized frontiers. However, both possibilities stand only a slim chance of success: Russia has made it clear that it must achieve more of its goals in the conflict before agreeing to any ceasefire, while its success in pushing Ukraine out of Kursk bodes ill for other invasions. The likelihood of Ukraine cutting its losses by agreeing to more of Russia's demands for peace is nil. Therefore, it might inevitably opt, whether in lieu of the scenarios mentioned above or in parallel with one or both of them, to intensify its 'unconventional operations' against Russia. These refer to assassinations, strategic drone strikes and terrorism. All that will do, however, is provoke more (probably outsized) conventional retaliation from Russia and thus more pain on a Ukraine already poised for defeat. With an eye toward the endgame, it appears as though an inflection point has or is about to be reached in the sense of irreversibly shifting the military-strategic dynamics in Russia's favor. It's very difficult to imagine how Ukraine can extricate itself from this dilemma, although the conflict has already surprised observers on both sides before, so it cannot be entirely ruled out. But it's a far-fetched scenario while Ukraine's defeat increasingly seems imminent. This article was first published on Andrew Korybko's Substack and is republished with kind permission. Become an Andrew Korybko Newsletter subscriber here.