Recent videos of a sea drone attack on a Russian warship released by Russia’s Defence Ministry and by Ukraine’s public broadcaster Suspilne tell two very different stories of the encounter.

The Russian video shows a Ukrainian sea drone, a small unmanned boat packed with explosives, being destroyedmin what is described as a foiled attack. A day later, an Ukrainian video shows a successful attack, at least damaging the Russian vessel, identified as the intelligence ship Yury Ivanov.

Frank Gardner, a BBC security correspondent, commented, “I think we need to be a bit cautious over videos like this… 

“Our forensics team haven’t been able to geolocate exactly where it was, but [the events in the Russian video] appear to have been closer to Istanbul than Crimea or the Ukrainian battlefront.

“But there are conflicting versions here. Russia says that they shot it out of the water. Ukraine appears to show a succesful attack by one of these, basically kind of a floating bomb.

“We need to be really careful here that we are not drawn into some kind of PR battle on bothh sides.

“But if it turns out to indeed be the case that this ship was hit or even targeted by one of these a very long long away from the battlefield, that would be a new development in the Ukrainian war.”

Was Russian warship attacked by Ukrainian drone boats in the Black Sea?

Thanks to Alaric Bond for contributing to this post.