Ukrainian servicemen board a boat on the shore of Dnipro river at the front line near Kherson.

More than 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers are feared to have been killed during a symbolic battle for a single village on the left bank of the Dnipro River.

The perilous months-long fight to establish a bridgehead in the village of Krynky, a southern Kherson fishing village, has been described as a suicide mission for soldiers, in an operation seen by commanders as crucial as for pinning down Russian forces in the area.

An investigation by Slidstvo, the Kyiv-based news website, found that at least 262 soldiers had died and 778 are still missing after nine months of struggling to maintain a foothold in the settlement.

Ukrainian marines were sent on a daring raid across the Dnipro, the river that bisects the country, in late October last year, in an attempt to establish a bridgehead in Russian-held territory.

The cross-river incursion was made possible after Russian forces were forced to retreat from the city of Kherson in November 2022. Ukrainian officials insisted the mission could open a new front in the war but observers and analysts cast doubt.

Marines crossed to the left bank on small dinghies with limited supplies, forced to fight on foot with the only long-range support coming from artillery and rocket launchers on the opposite side of the river.

Despite the initial successes in seizing Krynky and three other tiny riverside settlements, Ukraine’s forces slowly lost their grip on the area, unable to make any significant headway into the Russian-controlled area of the Kherson region.

The longer the Ukrainian operation went on, the more Russian reinforcements were brought in to end it.

Moscow grew its ranks from some 64,000 last autumn to 120,000 by this month, according to the Kyiv Independent.

Finally, Russian forces have appeared to overwhelm the Ukrainian marines in the area.

Ukrainian military officials have acknowledged their positions in Krynky had been “completely destroyed”, but denied wider reports the country’s forces have been withdrawn from the area.

The cross-river raid was widely seen as a desperate effort by Ukrainian politicians to demonstrate to Kyiv’s Western backers that its forces could make progress at the backend of the failed counter-offensive in the summer of 2023.

Soldiers taking part in the incursion, which requires a 30 to 60-minute boat journey through open water under the fire of Russian drones, have previously described it as being “tossed like a piece of meat to the wolves”.

And if they aren’t killed before reaching the riverbank the conditions only worsened for the Ukrainian marines.

“There were Russians to the right and left of us, and Russians in front of us. Behind us, there was water. There was nowhere to fall back to.” Vasyl, a soldier from Ukraine’s 37th marine brigade, told Slidstvo.

Ukraine’s Krynky commander sacked

He spent 72 days in Krynky between Dec 2 2023 and Valentine’s Day this year.

“If we had a wounded soldier, we immediately reported it so that a boat could come at night. Many boats couldn’t come, it happened that guys were lying with their limbs severed for 10 days, and the boats couldn’t come to us,” he added.

The operation in Krynky had been commanded by General Yuriy Sodol, who was sacked last month following allegations that his tactics had “killed more Ukrainian soldiers than any Russian general”.

Ukraine rarely makes public its casualty figures, but the Slidstvo report has triggered wide-scale anger among Ukrainians and prompted allegations that commanders are reckless with the lives of their men.

Unconfirmed open-source reports claim that Ukraine had lost 58 pieces of equipment in the mission compared to Russia’s 271.

But Oleksandr Kovalenko, a Ukrainian military expert, argued that the operation in the tiny fishing village had helped save lives elsewhere by preventing Russian troops from fighting in other offensive missions.

“Each life that was lost there, saved dozens of other lives on other fronts,” he said.

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Ukraine says its Sea Baby drones have become 'much more' powerful and can hit Russian ships anywhere in the Black Sea.

• Ukraine said its Sea Baby drones have been upgraded to become much more powerful.

• SBU spokesperson Artem Dehtiarenko said they can now strike Russian ships anywhere in the Black Sea.

• He also said that the drones can carry a ton of explosives over more than 600 miles.

Ukraine's security service said its Sea Baby drones have become "much more" powerful and can now strike Russian ships anywhere in the Black Sea.

Artem Dehtiarenko, a spokesperson for the SBU, said the drones have been upgraded to carry over a ton of explosives across over 1,000 kilometers, or about 621 miles, according to Ukrainian media outlets.

This is up from 800 kilograms and a distance of about 497 miles.

"Today, the SBU can attack enemy ships virtually anywhere across the Black Sea," he said, according to a translation by Ukrinform.

Dehtiarenko did not disclose the technical details but said that specialists from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Security Service, and others had created the "next-generation drones," per media outlet Rubryka.

He added that Sea Baby drones have been used to strike 11 Russian ships, including the patrol ship Pavel Derzhavin in October and the Olenegorsky Gornyak in August, per the outlet.

The SBU and Ukraine's Ministry of Internal Affairs didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

The reported upgrades come as a spokesperson for Ukraine's navy said in a Facebook post earlier this week that Russia had pulled its last Black Sea Fleet warship out of Crimea.

Ukraine has heavily targeted Russia's Black Sea Fleet, using aerial drones, sea drones, and anti-ship missiles.

Earlier this year, Ukraine's military claimed to have destroyed a third of the fleet, and in March, the UK's Ministry of Defence declared the Black Sea Fleet "functionally inactive."

This is the latest reported upgrade Ukraine's Sea Baby drones have undergone, as part of attempts to offset Russia's naval superiority.

In January, the SBU released video footage which it claimed showed Sea Baby drones firing missiles at Russian vessels.

And in March, the Financial Times' Ukraine correspondent, Christopher Miller, reported — citing an unnamed Ukrainian intelligence official — that Ukraine had placed rockets onto its naval drones to hit land targets.

Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal reported last month that four Russian ships, including the missile corvette Samum and patrol ship Pavel Derzhavin, were hit by mines laid by Sea Baby drones.

Brig Gen Ivan Lukashevych, the mastermind behind Ukraine's fleet of naval drones, told the Journal that they were being marshaled into squads of up to 20 drones that can replicate the abilities of a single warship.

Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, wrote last week that drone operations in the Black Sea have been so successful that they are sparking a fundamental rethink in the UK, France, the US, and elsewhere about how drones may affect future naval operations.

Clark cited the Pentagon's Replicator initiative, a monthlong plan to field air and naval drones at scale, which he said could be used to help counter a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

"Ukraine's small, low-cost sea drones are offering a compelling view of future tactics and capabilities," he said.

However, while Russia may have lost naval superiority and sea control over the Black Sea, it does not mean that Ukraine has control of the Black Sea either, Basil Germond, an expert in international security at Lancaster University in the UK, said.

But it does mean that Russia's options at sea are now minimal

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