The commander’s campaign began in May, when the Russian reconnaissance ship Ivan Khurs was forced to limp back to port from the Bosphorus after being struck by mysterious explosions.

In July, and again in September, the state-of-the-art Russian patrol ship Sergey Kotov suffered the same fate.

The second time it was damaged, drones hit the ship by accident when they manoeuvred to avoid pursuit by enemy aircraft.

He said all these attacks were the work of the GUR team of remote operators. “These weapons are extremely effective,” the commander said. “If we just imagine roughly what it costs to build ships like the Kotov and to train the crews — it takes years to build and crew ships like that. Even if we count all the drones used in an attack on one, they are thousands of times cheaper.”

The drone operators are changing naval warfare by exposing the vulnerability of enemy vessels to cheap, rapidly produced suicide drones. “We are writing history,” he said.

“And our western partners are very interested in these tools.”
Other units, including those from Ukraine’s state security service, the SBU, have used Sea Baby drones to attack the Kerch bridge, the frigate ­Admiral Makarov, a Sig oil tanker and the Olenegorskiy Gornyak, a Ropucha-class landing ship. These weapons carry a larger 450kg warhead.

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