News
On the night of March 4-5, Ukraine’s Navy, together with the country’s Special Operations Forces, struck Russian troops on the Sivash drilling platform, located in the Black Sea’s Holitsynske gas field. For the first time, they hit a Russian helicopter on the offshore platform using a drone, the navy’s press service said.
According to the Ukrainian Navy, Russia uses the platform as a point for observation and communications relay, and also to deploy electronic warfare systems and short-range air defense. Those systems have been used to control strike drones aimed against infrastructure in Ukraine’s Odesa and Mykolaiv regions and to threaten civilian shipping.
During the operation, uncrewed surface drones and aerial drones struck Russian command and communications systems. Ukrainian forces also used a first-person-view (FPV) drone to bring down a Ka-27 helicopter that was attempting to land on the platform’s helipad at the moment of the strike.
The Holitsynske gas field is located on the Black Sea shelf, 70 kilometers northwest of Crimea’s coast. Russia seized it, along with other Chornomornaftogaz facilities, after the 2014 annexation of Crimea. In September 2023, Ukraine’s military intelligence agency carried out an operation to seize the platform, but it was later taken back by Russian forces.