Watch: Ukrainian drones strike Russian base in Caspian Sea for first time

Kyiv’s military intelligence says its forces hit three of Moscow’s warships

Ukrainian drones have struck a Russian naval base on the Caspian Sea for the first time.
Four drones were filmed attacking the port of Kaspiysk in Dagestan, nearly 1,000 miles from Ukraine, early on Wednesday morning.
Ukrainian military intelligence has claimed responsibility for the aerial assault, saying that its forces had hit three Russian warships in the port once considered out of reach of Ukrainian drones.
“The targets reportedly included the missile ships Tatarstan and Dagestan. Project 21631 small missile ships may have also been damaged,” it said.
Footage of the attack shows a drone crashing into the port and exploding. As the drone approaches its target, machine guns start firing and, just before impact, uniformed Russian sailors are seen sprinting for cover.
Baza, a Telegram channel with close links to Russia’s security services, which posted footage of the attack, said: “Kaspiysk was preliminarily attacked by an A-22 Flying Fox drone.”
The A-22 Flying Fox drone is a converted small light aircraft. They are considered slow but steady and have one of the longest ranges of Ukraine’s drone arsenal.
Baza also reported that the airport at Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, was temporarily closed after the drone attack. Kaspiysk lies roughly 10 miles south of Makhachkala, a city of one million people.
Russia’s defence ministry has not commented and damage to its warships could not be confirmed.
Ukrainian intelligence said the targeted fleet was involved in strikes against Ukraine, and the 177th Marine Regiment stationed at Kaspiysk had been involved in battles in the Ukrainian regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
Analysts have said that the Caspian Sea, which is ringed by Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Iran and Azerbaijan and is roughly the size of Suffolk, had become an impregnable Iran-Russia weapons transit route.
Iran sends cargo ships packed with missiles and drones across the Caspian Sea to Russia, possibly partly through Kaspiysk.
Russian Tu-95 heavy bombers also consider the airspace above the Caspian Sea to be a safe haven. They use it to fire ballistic missiles at Ukrainian cities, before returning to their bases in Russia.
HI Sutton, a naval analyst, said that Russia’s Caspian Sea Fleet had been “quite active” firing missiles at Ukraine since the start of the war and he was not surprised that Ukrainian drones had attacked its base.
“I think a lot of people have been waiting months for this,” he said.
Frustrated that its Nato allies have denied it permission to fire long-range missiles into Russia, Ukraine has expanded its drone attacks over the past six months.
It has hit energy and satellite infrastructure targets in the Arctic and Siberia but this is the first attack on a Russian naval fleet outside the Black Sea.
Last week, Ukrainian drones hit Russia’s special forces training centre in Chechnya, which neighbours Dagestan.
The drone attack came a few hours before Russia’s upper house of parliament rubber-stamped a “mutual military assistance” deal agreed between Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un, the North Korean dictator.
North Korea has sent an estimated 12,000 soldiers to Russia’s Kursk region and the Russian parliament’s full approval now green lights their entry into the war.
But Kyiv and Washington officials say North Korean soldiers have already been ordered into battle against Ukrainian troops, with clashes reported on Tuesday.
Two officials told the New York Times that a “significant number” of North Korean troops had already been killed in a probing skirmish.
The North Korean soldiers are likely to be poor quality used by the Russian military to feed into its mass infantry strategy which is overwhelming Ukrainian defenders, but suffering casualties of up to 1,200 men a day.
North Korea has become an important ally to the Kremlin since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, supplying mainly artillery shells and missiles.