Ukrainian drones have struck the Russian corvette Boikiy in the port of Kronstadt, according to a report by Robert “Madyar” Brovdi, commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces.
Ukraine has continuously degraded the Russian Black Sea Fleet since the 2022 full-scale invasion, successfully destroying or disabling over a third of its vessels. This includes sinking the fleet’s flagship, the Moskva, and striking critical command headquarters in Sevastopol.
In May 2026, Ukrainian forces struck a Russian Black Sea Fleet air defence command post and a brigade base in occupied Crimea, killing and injuring dozens of personnel.
Kyiv expanded its targeting to the “shadow fleet” tankers that support Russian naval operations, disabling vessels near Black Sea ports like Novorossiysk.
On June 2 2026, Ukraine’s one-way attack drones struck the Boikyi and other two corvettes, Russian Steregushchy-class guided-missile corvette, at the Kronstadt naval base near St. Petersburg. Boikyi was responsible for escorting the Russian shadow oil fleet.
The published video appears to show at least two hits. The Russian pro-war Telegram channel Rybar wrote that the Boikiy was undergoing scheduled repairs in a dry dock at the Kronstadt Marine Plant.
The Boikiy spoofed its signal by using a shared Maritime Mobile Service Identity (MMSI), causing it to appear in tracking systems as multiple maritime objects.
On June 3, the opening day of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), the city came under a large-scale Ukrainian drone attack. The locations hit included the St. Petersburg Oil Terminal, the city’s Kirovsky and Krasnoselsky districts, and infrastructure facilities in Kronstadt.
According to The Insider’s calculations, this is the third Baltic Fleet ship damaged during Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine. In April 2024, the missile ship Serpukhov, Project 21631 Buyan-M, caught fire after being hit in a sabotage attack at the Kaliningrad Region’s Baltiysk base. Another ship of the same type, the Grad, was hit in October 2025 in Karelia.
Ukraine primarily uses a combination of naval drones (“Sea Baby” or “Magura V5”), airborne one-way long-range drone and advanced Western-supplied cruise missiles (such as Storm Shadows) to strike both at sea and deep within heavily fortified naval docks. These relentless, asymmetric strikes have forced the Russian Navy to disperse its assets away from Crimean ports and even cancel traditional Navy Day parades.
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