ANALYSIS: GoPro Video of Ukraine’s Swarming Naval Drone Attack That Sank Russian Assault Ship

New GoPro video from a Russian crew member shows a swarm of Ukrainian robotic naval drones attacking one of the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s heaviest warships, the Cesar Kunikov, as posted on Telegram.

An unspecified number of these unmanned surface vessels (USVs) sank the 4,000-ton amphibious assault ship in the pre-dawn hours of Feb. 14.

The new first-person body camera footage was posted on the Telegram channel Ukraina Online: Novyny Polityka with a 2:43-long video of most of the attack with the caption:

“Rusnia published a GoPro video of one of the crew members of the VDK ‘Cesar Kunikov’ at the time of its destruction by our naval drones on February 14.”

Narrative of the (rather chaotic) Kunikov crew member video

The silent video begins as the crew member exits through a hatch onto the ship’s deck amidst chaos in the early morning mist, with search lights scanning the water's surface as tracers fly from hand-held rifles wielded by crew members across the ship’s rails.

The first drone in the footage appears to approach the ship and then turn away sharply only to immediately turn back toward the ship as it prepares to ram it.

The crew member goes into the interior for a few seconds and then returns to what seems to be drones swarming like sharks.

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Waves of Russian Drones, Missiles Hit Across Ukraine

The drone strikes persisted intermittently for multiple hours on Sunday morning, followed by dozens of missiles, including the Kinzhal hypersonic missiles.

Flashes of several explosions take place throughout the video as the crew members continue targeting the drones with full-auto fire from their assault rifles with tracers visible and red fragments or ricocheting rounds appearing to come from possible hits on the drones, which nevertheless appear to continue the attack.

At one point the crewmember appears to go through the ship’s cabin to the opposite side’s deck where the chaos seems to be the same. There is an unused assault rifle lying on the interior floor as the crew member passes through.

In the last few seconds, there is yet another flash from what looks like a drone exploding as it impacts the ship. The entire attack lasts only a few minutes with much of it captured on this GoPro video.

According to reports on that day, the attacking USVs were loaded with explosives and remotely controlled by operators from the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s Main Directorate for Intelligence (HUR), which struck the heavy assault ship Caesar Kunikov as the vessel was close offshore from the Crimean resort town of Alupka.