[CoffeeOrDie] You never know what the tide will drag in, especially in wartime.
Photos circulated on Russian social media channels on Wednesday, Sept. 21, showing an unusual, unmanned boat that washed up on a beach near a Russian navy base in the city of Sevastopol, within occupied Crimea. Shaped like a kayak, the vessel is painted in a subdued color scheme and equipped with a white fixture, somewhat resembling a periscope, that holds a forward-facing sensor. In the available photos from social media, there are no visible markings that identify the craft’s nationality.
According to Russian social media posts, the unusual craft washed up on a beach not far from the entrance to Sevastopol’s harbor — roughly 150 miles from coastline under Ukrainian government control.
Ukraine has not yet claimed ownership of the unmanned craft. From the available photos, it’s not clear whether the small boat contained an explosive device. However, Russian authorities reportedly took the drone boat out to sea and blew it up — a decision that subsequently led some open-source intelligence investigators to assume the craft was carrying an explosive warhead.
If the beached mystery craft were, in fact, an armed Ukrainian aquatic drone, it would be another headache for Russian forces on the illegally annexed Ukrainian peninsula. Over the past several months, the expanding reach of Ukrainian missiles and airborne drones have put Russian forces in Crimea on the defensive and forced the transfer of some key Russian military hardware out of the area.
On Tuesday, for example, the British Ministry of Defense reported that Russia had “almost certainly” moved its Kilo-class submarines out of Sevastopol, relocating them to a base in southern Russia beyond the range of Ukrainian missiles and drones.
According to the British Defense Ministry: “This is highly likely due to the recent change in the local security threat level in the face of increased Ukrainian long-range strike capability. In the last two months, the fleet headquarters and its main naval aviation airfield have been attacked.”
On July 31, a Ukrainian drone aircraft detonated a munition at Black Sea Fleet headquarters in Sevastopol, reportedly wounding six Russian military personnel.
“Due to the attack on the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet, the city should now be considered front-line,” Razvozhayev reportedly said at the time. 
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