Russia flew hundreds of warplane sorties against a small group of Ukrainian sea drones, according to the ArmyInform. The drones belong to Group 13, a Ukrainian military-intelligence unit. The unit is running out of Russian warships to sink and now strikes land targets from the sea, its commander, known by his call sign Thirteenth, said.

Years ago, Russia entered its all-out war against Ukraine with a commanding navy and treated the Black Sea as its own. A country left with almost no warships has since answered with cheap robot boats, turning expendable machines into the tool that now contests that sea.

More than 500 sorties to hunt one small drone group

Group 13 hunts Russian warships with Magura sea drones—uncrewed attack boats. Russia flew more than 500 aircraft sorties against a group of eight to 10 Magura drones at the time, the commander said. Moscow spent more on locating the drones than the unit's entire mission cost, he added. Missions have grown longer, too. What once took a day now takes three, four, or five days.

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The commander split the unit's rise into three stages: victory at sea, an end to Russian air dominance over the water, and now strikes on land from the sea. The bar set in 2023 and 2024 is unrealistic to hold in the Black Sea today, he said, because there are no ship targets left, and what remains is harder to reach. A struck S-400 air-defense system does not pay off like a sunk warship, he added.

The bill for Russia

The damage runs past destroyed hardware. Each Russian sailor killed leaves a family pension to pay and training to write off, the commander said. He pointed to the Syrian Express, Russia's sea supply line to Syria. It once ran a short route and now goes through the Baltic Sea, and the whole bill runs into the millions, he said.

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The unit's capabilities came together in a strike on the Ivan Khurs, a Russian reconnaissance ship, its first target. The later sinking of the missile boat Ivanovets killed 40 Russian crew in minutes, the commander recalled. He expects the unit to be remembered as revolutionaries, likening its sea drones to the first tanks more than a century ago.

On 4 September, Ukraine's military intelligence agency HUR published drone footage of an August operation against a Russian coastal missile launcher in occupied Crimea, it said on Telegram. Its special unit Group 13 struck the launcher and hit fuel trucks and a command vehicle on the peninsula in the same operation. 

What HUR says its operators hit

The target was a Bastion, the carrier of Zircon and Oniks missiles. Russia uses those missiles for terrorist strikes against Ukraine, HUR said.

Group 13 operators destroyed and struck two fuel trucks and a command-and-staff vehicle belonging to Russian forces, the agency said. It placed the work in August 2026 without giving a date or a place on the peninsula.

The footage shows the view from drone cameras closing on the targets. HUR did not say what kind of drones its operators used, and the unit works with both aerial and naval systems, including naval drones rigged to carry FPV drones.

Designated 3K55, the system defends a shoreline and hits both surface and ground targets, warships among them. It takes up to five minutes to deploy, fires supersonic P-800 Oniks and hypersonic Zircon missiles, and reaches from 300 to 600 km depending on the missile and the mode of use. It doubles as an air defense asset, tracking up to 50 objects along the horizon at up to 250 km with passive radar and 450 km with active radar. Russia has fielded it since 2010 and builds it in a mobile version and a silo-based one.

Other Ukrainian services have hit Bastions before

Ukraine's Navy said its forces struck a Bastion's launch positions and deployment site on the peninsula overnight on 16 August, without naming a unit. Ukrainian forces hit a Bastion launcher in the occupied village of Aktachi in March, and in February they struck the concentration area of the Russian brigade that operates the system in Crimea.

In an operation earlier in the summer, one of Group 13's uncrewed boats launched attack drones at two Russian radars in occupied Crimea without the vessel ever reaching shore.

Strikes on the peninsula continued overnight

Drone attacks on occupied Crimea have been running for weeks, and they continued into 4 September, though what was hit this time is not yet known. 

Explosions sounded in Sevastopol and Dzhankoi district, Suspilne reported. Monitoring channels logged blasts and drone flights past 04:00, and satellite imagery showed a fire west of the airfield at Hvardiiske, with the cause unconfirmed. Russia's Defense Ministry claimed 490 drones downed over Crimea, other occupied territories, and Russian regions.