Naval drones force Russia to hide its ships and allow transportation of Ukraine's cargo - military expert Zgurets

He said this on the Espreso TV channel.

Russia relocated its fleet from Sevastopol to protect it from Ukrainian naval drones.

"We are actually saying that we have a technological solution that allows us to asymmetrically influence Russia. We have several lines of these robotic maritime drones (the first was MAGURA V5), but we thought they were only strike drones, meaning they could operate at a distance of 600-800 kilometers with a warhead of 320 kg. However, The New York Times, in discussions with our military developers, reported that there are already drones suitable for mining, for bringing mines to areas where Russian warships may move, and for reconnaissance," the expert emphasized.

In addition to the MAGURA V5, Ukraine has a more powerful SeaBaby maritime drone equipped with an 850 kg warhead, which was used to strike the Crimean bridge.

"This whole range of drones has influenced the enemy to redeploy all its most important ships to Novorossiysk, fearing an attack from our drones. Therefore, asymmetric approaches are working and we see quite effective results at sea, where we already have our own corridor for transporting our grain and metal cargo to European countries or other consumers," Zgurets summarized.

At the same time, the director of the Defense Express company emphasized that Russia's situation with UAVs has become more complicated.

"Now the Russians are starting to use civilian rather than military electronics to create their own designs, and control over civilian electronics, components that are manufactured in the United States and Europe, among other countries, is extremely difficult to control. They are developing different variations of strengthening sanctions on the one hand and controlling electronics that are supplied to the Russian Federation, but they often come not directly, of course, but maybe through Kazakhstan, Armenia, which are the most common supply chains for these components, and there are also variations of companies registered in Turkey. In fact, the use of civilian electronics to create military models becomes much more complicated," he added.

• The SBU said that the SeaBaby drones used a special connection to avoid relying on Starlink satellite communications alone.