Ukrainian Drones Strike Russian Missile Boat and Iran-Linked Cargo Ships in the Caspian Sea

Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) said it struck a Russian Navy missile boat, two sanctioned cargo ships and an offshore oil platform in the Caspian Sea on the night of July 25, 2026, in what Ukrainian officials described as the first strike wave against Russia's Caspian Flotilla since the start of the full-scale invasion.

The SBU said its long-range drones hit a Project 12418 Molniya missile boat, the cargo ship Port Olya 2, the dry cargo ship Begey and an oil platform at Lukoil's Filanovsky field. Ukrainian outlet Militarnyi identified the warship as Stupinets, hull number 705. Launched at the Vympel yard in Rybinsk on July 29, 2024, the boat was still running builder's sea trials and had not yet been commissioned into the Caspian Flotilla. No damage assessment for the boat has been released and Russian authorities have not commented on it. The same operation also struck a 92N6E Grave Stone radar, a Tor-M2 surface-to-air missile system, a Pole-21 electronic warfare complex and two drone warehouses in Rostov-on-Don, according to the SBU statement carried by Interfax-Ukraine.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine had achieved "very strong results with long-range strikes in the Caspian Sea," citing vessels used in military cargo shipments involving Iran as well as a warship. Port Olya 2 and Begey are under U.S., British, Canadian and Ukrainian sanctions. Kyiv says both have carried Iranian ammunition, artillery shells, body armor and components for Shahed-type attack drones to Russia, and Ukraine's ambassador to Israel said one of the ships was loaded with parts for drone and missile production.

Iran's Foreign Ministry said an explosion aboard one of the vessels, which had sailed from the Russian port of Astrakhan, killed one Iranian sailor and wounded another. Tehran summoned Ukraine's charge d'affaires, called the strike a "hostile and criminal" act and said it violated Article 2(4) of the UN Charter. Iran's foreign minister wrote that the attack "cannot go unanswered."

The Caspian Flotilla is the smallest of Russia's naval formations and the only one with no access to the open ocean. GlobalMilitary.net tracks 36 hulls in its 2026 order of battle, built around two Gepard-class frigates, three Buyan-M small missile ships of the type that fired Kalibr cruise missiles at Ukrainian targets in 2022, and a screen of Serna landing craft, Grachonok and Shmel patrol boats. Its missile boats belong to the Project 1241 Molniya family, known to NATO as Tarantul: a 580-ton, 42-knot hull armed with Kh-35 Uran anti-ship missiles, a 76 mm AK-176 gun and short-range air defense. The reach of the strike matters more than the target's tonnage, since the Caspian is landlocked and lies roughly 1,000 km from Ukrainian-held territory.

The attack adds to a steady tally of losses for the navy of Russia, ranked third in the global military power ranking. GlobalMilitary.net has logged 15 Russian naval events so far in 2026, among them the sinking of the patrol ship Izumrud at Gelendzhik on July 14 and damage to the corvette Boikiy at Kronstadt in June. Ukraine has progressively pushed its uncrewed strike systems from the Black Sea into the Sea of Azov, the Baltic approaches and now the Caspian over the course of the war with Russia.

Neither the Russian Defense Ministry nor the Caspian Flotilla has published a damage assessment for Stupinets. Iran has not said what form its promised response might take.