In a separate strike hitting the Kremlin-occupied peninsula, drones flown by operators from Ukraine's military intelligence agency (HUR) hit Russian air force helicopters at a nearby airfield.
A salvo of Flamingo cruise missiles, newly developed by Ukraine, pounded a base operated by Russia's national security and intelligence agency in the occupied Crimea peninsula, according to reports killing one Kremlin agent and destroying or damaging six hovercraft parked at the site.
At least three powerful, new Flamingo cruise missiles likely launched from Ukraine's Odesa region crossed the western Black Sea to strike the seaside facility near the Crimean town of Armyansk in a Saturday attack, Ukraine's Militarniy military news website reported.
The site reportedly has been operated by Federal Security Service (FSS), Russia's main successor agency to the Soviet-era KGB, since the Kremlin's invasion and takeover of Ukraine's Crimea Peninsula in 2014.
The missiles reportededly demolished an administrative building and destroyed six military-grade hovercraft used by FSS operators for sea patrols, mainstream Ukrainian media reported. The boats were identified as likely to be A-8 Khivus or A25PS hovercraft designed to carry, respectively, 8 or 25 armed soldiers or marines. Armyansk social media reported ambulances responding to the scene.
Fresh satellite imagery of the strike scene published by the European Copernicus network showed probable explosion and fire damage within the base perimeter, and fire and smoke damage in an open area opposite the base. The low-resolution images did not show objects the size of a hovercraft.
Ukrainian media on Sunday published a video, originally released by a Ukrainian mil-blogger writing mostly on Black Sea combat operations called Nikolaevsky Vanyok, showing three cruise missiles lifting off in succession from a seaside site in a probable dawn launch. According that source the video was a recording of launches in the Saturday strike.
One missile was shown in a dawn launch video to shed a detachable launch assist motor dropping from the rocket shortly after taking off, a design feature consistent with Ukraine's Flamingo missile.
Russia's independent Astra news agency confirmed the fact of the attack but identified the missile used as, possibly, a Ukrainian Long Neptune missile, a weapon originally designed for an anti-ship role but in 2024 fitted with a more powerful engine and warhead, in order to attack land targets. One operator at the FSS site was killed but the degree of damage to the building and hovercraft wasn't clear, Astra reported.
North Crimean media and social media chat groups monitored by Kyiv Post reported an attack and explosions taking place near the village of Voloshyne, adjacent to the FSS base, on Saturday. All those reports said the weapon used most likely was a Flamingo missile. Russia's Defense Ministry by Monday had not commented on the strike.
Ukraine's Saturday strike hitting the FSS base was paralleled with a drone raid hitting a military airfield near the Crimean regional capital Simferopol on Saturday at about 7 a.m. local time(0400 UTC).
Ukraine's military intelligence agency HUR took credit for the strike and claimed at least two military helicopters had been badly damaged or destroyed in the raid. Russia's ASTRA agency citing Russian military sources reported one Mi-8 general purpose helicopter was "totally destroyed". Satellite imagery reviewed by ASTRA showed the second aircraft, possibly a Mi-24 helicopter gunship, "was almost certainly destroyed", the report said.
Drone imagery published by HUR showed two drone attacks taking place in terrain closely resembling Simferopol's Hvardeyske military airfield, and one probable hit in the right engine of one of the helicopters.
Other images, undated, showed HUR drones targeting Russian air defense radars, a GLONASS transmission tower and a Russian navy tugboat. Crimean social media video of Gvardeyske airfield posted on Saturday showed a thick black smoke column consistent with a major fire.
Ukrainian government spokesmen in mid-August announced and showed to media a production facility for the Flamingo cruise missile and claimed it could carry a warhead weighing more than a ton to a range in excess of 3,000 kilometers.
The missile had been domestically-developed in less than twelve months because of restrictions placed by the United States on firing long-range weapons sent to Ukraine by NATO against targets inside Russia. Ukrainian officials have stated there are no foreign restrictions on the use of the domestically-developed Flamingo.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a Sunday video address to voters said that his government would accelerate strikes against targets inside Russia, because the Kremlin is uninterested in a peace process.
Kremlin spokesmen have said they are for peace and blamed Ukraine for defending its territory. They have repeatedly accused NATO of helping Ukraine attack Russia, by flying spy planes out over the Black Sea to gather targeting data in Russia-occupied Crimea and Russia's sea coast, and then turning over intelligence gathered to Ukrainian strike planners.
NATO spokesmen have said that the Atlantic Alliance helps Ukraine with material but, stringently avoids hostile acts against Russia. Kyiv Post checks of public air traffic tracking platforms showed no recorded NATO reconnaissance flights over the Black Sea on Saturday.
Prior to the Ukrainian strike against Simferpol and Armyansk the most recent long-range NATO reconnaissance flight in proximity to Crimea, that tracked by public access platforms, was flown on Thursday by a Royal Air Force Boeing RC-135W Rivet Joint electronic surveillance jet. The Mildenhall-based plane remained in international air space during a pair of approaches to Crimea's western shore, and then returned to Britain without incident.
On Wednesday, a US Navy Poseidon maritime reconnaissance aircraft flew to international air space south of Crimea. The Russian Air Force on Thursday published video it said showed a Russian Su-27 fighter jet flying next to the American spy plane after intercepting it.
On Sunday, a US Air Force Global Hawk long-range reconnaissance drone flew the length of the Black Sea and loitered for about two hours in international air space south of Crimea.