Key Points and Summary – Ukraine’s Navy announced a successful precision drone strike on the Sivash drilling platform in the Black Sea, which Russia had seized in 2014 and repurposed as a military surveillance post.
-The strike reportedly “obliterated” an elite Russian special operations (spetsnaz) unit, their reconnaissance equipment, and an anti-tank missile team.
Tu-95 Bomber Russian Air Force. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
Tu-95 Bear Bomber. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
-The Ukrainian Navy stated the drone’s warhead triggered a secondary detonation of ammunition stored on the platform.
-The strike is part of a broader, effective campaign by Ukraine to degrade Russian monitoring capabilities in the Black Sea and escalate strikes on Russian energy infrastructure.
Ukraine Scores One Big Victory over Russia
WARSAW, POLAND – According to a statement released on Nov. 3, Ukraine’s Navy carried out a precision strike on a Russian offshore platform in the Black Sea. Moscow had stationed an elite special operations unit at the site and was using the platform as a military observation post.
The self-elevating drilling rig was previously operated by Ukraine’s state-owned Chornomornaftogaz company for oil and gas exploration. It was taken over by Russian forces and then used for military operations after Moscow’s illegal invasion of Crimea in 2014.
An official Ukrainian statement described the operation as targeting the Sivash drilling platform, with the Ukrainian Navy’s prime objective being the elimination of Russian special operations personnel. Kyiv’s strike destroyed not only a surveillance and reconnaissance equipment team that had been based there, but also a Russian military anti-tank missile team.
A Ukrainian Navy report on the operation stated, “the enemy’s reconnaissance and observation systems, as well as the crew of an anti-tank missile complex, were destroyed.”
Anti-tank missile units have been used by both sides in this war to attack shipping and other seaborne targets.
The statement added that Russian media outlets later presented the loss of their special-ops unit as a victory. Rather than showing the destroyed oil platform, Moscow instead released footage that supposedly showed the destruction of a small Ukrainian Navy craft by a Russian-designed Lancet loitering munition.
Tu-95. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
The Ukrainian Navy said the video posted by Moscow was misleading. To hit the platform, the Ukrainian Navy said it launched a drone equipped with an explosive payload to hit the Russian position. The warhead wiped out the contingent stationed on the platform because it triggered a detonation of enemy equipment and ammunition stored there.
Remaining Russian Operations In The Black Sea
Although the Russian Navy has fled the Black Sea precisely because of losses caused by just such drone strikes, the Sivash platform, originally taken over by Russian spetsnaz units, was repurposed into a surveillance and signals intelligence installation.
According to the Ukrainian armed forces, the platform was “equipped with radar systems, optical sensors, and radio reconnaissance tools to monitor maritime activity.”
The attack will limit Moscow’s capability to track Ukrainian naval operations, as well its operations to monitor the communications of Kyiv’s own covert and special operations units in the Black Sea. Ukraine’s security services have been effective in taking out Russian assets in the Black Sea through the use of sea drones, particularly the Magura V5 marine drone.
Previously, Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence Directorate carried out a precision strike in the occupied region of Crimea. The attack destroyed multiple Russian radar and air-defense emplacements, including a 92N6E radar station and other components of an Almaz-Antei S-400 air defense battery.
The Syvash platform is one of four offshore installations that were known as the Boyko Towers. They included the Petro Hodovanets, Tavryda and Ukraina. All of them were seized by Russia following the 2014 annexation of Crimea.
The latest attack comes after a series of Ukrainian strikes on Russian energy facilities—strikes carried out in retaliation for Moscow targeting the power grids of Ukrainian cities. In the last week, Ukraine’s Navy launched R-360 Neptune missile strikes on two central Russian energy industry installations–the Oryol thermal power plant and the Novobryanskaya substation.
Limiting Power to Moscow’s Military
According to Ukrainian military officials, both of those facilities supply electricity to defense enterprises linked to Russia’s military industry.
The Oryol thermal power plant provides up to 40 percent of the region’s power needs and 65 percent of the city’s heating supply. This makes it one of the area’s primary energy sources.
Oryol’s regional governor, Andrey Klychkov, claimed on Oct. 31 that the region’s thermal power plant was damaged by falling drone debris. No plant personnel were killed or injured, according to local Russian officials.
Ukraine’s increasing attacks on Russian energy facilities and military bases deep inside Russia are part of a strategic shift to weaken Moscow’s ability to wage war.
Kyiv says that these attacks are in response to Russian President Vladimir Putin ordering his armed forces to hit Ukraine’s energy grids with drone and missile attacks to deplete Ukrainian heating and electricity grids ahead of winter.
About the Author: Reuben F. Johnson
Reuben F. Johnson has thirty-six years of experience analyzing and reporting on foreign weapons systems, defense technologies, and international arms export policy. Johnson is the Director of the Asia Research Centre at the Casimir Pulaski Foundation. He is also a survivor of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He worked for years in the American defense industry as a foreign technology analyst and later as a consultant for the U.S. Department of Defense, the Departments of the Navy and Air Force, and the governments of the United Kingdom and Australia. In 2022-2023, he won two awards in a row for his defense reporting. He holds a bachelor’s degree from DePauw University and a master’s degree from Miami University in Ohio, specializing in Soviet and Russian studies. He lives in Warsaw.
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Swamplaw Yankee
November 5, 2025 at 2:26 pm
The peer readers are fortunate that a small number of op-ed writers are out of the inner beltway aquarium. That is, the writer is in, or close to the meat grinder trench butchery Genocide Line bankrolled by the PRC CCP Xi regime thru its vassal, Kremlin ruuzzkie Putin.
The above is an example. The Yankee reader is educated that Ukrainian Fathers have addressed the energy supply of, inter alia, the Greater MOSCOW Area.
While the PRC CCP Xi regime understands the psychological inability of USA forces and NATO to provide planned tax dollars to defend the US + Europe, the Han intelligence networks has a lesser grasp on the nebulous, gossamer intellectual ability, an ability that is in fact tangible, of Ukrainian Fathers.
As the Han intelligence laughs uncontrollably at commie high altitude balloons drifting slowly, with zero US MSM, over the USA and non-NATO drones all over military nuclear facilities in Europe, Ukrainian Fathers have an interest that the Han is addicted to. Yes, the Han commies are addicted to Ukraine.
While, the implants of the Stalin era inside the USA still legacy function, ( Gouzenko -Verona style), the only counter to the PRC CCP LONG GAME comes from Ukraine. Versus: The USA. Any top commie pulls out their well rubbed ruuzzkie redlines, and their internal US fellow travellers, still operating subversively, all capitulate the World geopolitics, usually asap.
Ukraine was caught in this US POTUS disease, particularly, in the years 2008-2014. As the vassals in the Kremlin ruuzzkie Putin Cabal displayed their redlines, emitted by the PRC CCP WW3 Long Game, the blatantly diseased POTUS structure fervently danced to the commie redlines.
The most vivid intellectual collapse was inside the POTUS Obama Democrat White House Cabal. As Kremlin ruuzzkie Putin, enacted the deeply funded ‘LOMG GAME’ of the PRC CCP, the Yankee low-capacity morons planted inside the White House, functioned just as the Han intelligence predicted.
The White House low-capacity morons started the PRC CCP mantra that the Kremlin instructed them to take. Sanctions, sanctions, oligarchs, oligarchs was the con, the scam. Notice there was zero intellectual activity at any other level inside the low-capacity moron White House. The historical concern is that there will be no paper evidence left by the time the 25 year time frame occurs.
The other reality, is that there was zero, zip intellectual activity at NATO or any other traditional ally of the “WEST”. What did Canada do with its zero level armed forces? In contrast, a high level armed nation like Israel, a frien of the “WEST” what did Israel do as the PRC CCP LONG PLAN unfolded inside the Obama moron house?
Israel needs special focus in the 2014 collapse by the USA White House of Ukraine. Israel had its protective veneer striped away by the Kremlin ruuzzkies and was laid open to the muslim “long” interests inside the PRC CCP structures.
Who did Israel consult, warn or what in 2013-2014? So Israel allowed the POTUS Obama low-capacity White house to lose NATO geopolitical control of the Ukraine’s Crimean ancient soil, Families and Black/Azov sea jurisdictional zones to the prime vile Cold War enemy of the WEST, Kremlin ruuzzkie Putin.
So, Israel knew all this well in advance, that now NATO was effectively cut off from Turkey. Particularly that Gog would be advanced to Israel’s very shoreline. Air or Cheap water transport thru the Volga/Azov line from any terrorist state leader could now access the Black Sea/Turkey with no interference from the WEST (Ukraine).
New data closer to meat grinder 1000 year old Genocide line is welcome. But, the long-term disease inside the low-capacity White House structure continues. The self-abdication of the MAGA POTUS in 2025 from tangible leadership of the WEST is so evident to every world leader. The meddling of the Orange Scarecrow White House Cabal to illegally donate, “swap” Ukrainian soil to the Kremlin ruuzzkie Putin shows every US voter the betrayal of Obama in 2014 is still in full swing in the White House, et al. Orange Scarecrow has no capacity to self-appoint himself, or some Whacckkooff apparatchik, to self-donate a part of Europe, Ukraine, to the Cold War enemy of the WEST! While vanity may move the Orange Scarecrow, cold logic must move the US voter to demand one public sentence from the brainless Orange Scarecow: immediately Return ALL illegally occupied Ukrainian lands and pre-deposit in gold bullion $10, 000,000 for compensation/reparation to all mass abducted children and adults since 2014.
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