Video has emerged showing a twin-boom tail configured drone crashing into a Russian oil refinery in Novoshakhtinsk, in the Rostov region, on the border with Ukraine, on June 22. There is already much speculation that the incident was some kind of ‘kamikaze’ drone strike conducted by the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
While the identity of the mysterious drone is yet to be established, initial analysis suggests it may have been an adapted, commercially available product that is available on the Chinese marketplace website Alibaba.
Filmed from nearby, the video clearly shows a twin-boom tail, pusher propeller-driven drone flying toward the refinery before making a steep dive and crashing into it, quickly resulting in a blaze.
The drone seen in the video might be some kind of commercially available product, perhaps the Skyeye 5000mm available on the Chinese Alibaba website, that was then rigged up for a ‘kamikaze’ mission by Ukrainian technicians. In particular, the shape of the tail fins on the Skyeye drone seems to tally with those of the drone in the video. The drones are selling for between $5,000 and $10,000 on the site.
Skyeye 5000mm being sold on Alibaba
What makes the apparent attack on Novoshakhtinsk especially notable is that we can clearly see one of the drones hitting a valuable infrastructure target. There have, however, been multiple previous blasts in different Russian provinces along the Ukrainian border in the last months, including reportedly on airbases and ammunition storage sites. While the cause of these previous explosions remains unclear, there has been speculation that they could have been carried out by Ukraine.
For full analysis see The Warzone