Kyiv, Ukraine

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, on Friday, backed a fundraising campaign to help Kyiv build its fleet of naval drones to protect cities from Russian missiles fired from the Black Sea. The fundraising site claims that since the beginning of the invasion in February, Russia has launched over 4,000 missiles in Ukraine and “every fifth strike came from the sea”. 

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The initiative launched by Zelensky called United24 raises charitable donations for Ukraine and said that they need 100 drones, each of which costs 10 million hryvnias (around $274,000). “Naval drones will also help unblock the corridor for civilian ships transporting grain for the world,” said the Ukrainian president on Telegram on November 11. 

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“I am sure that millions of people will support this important area of Ukraine's defence,” Zelensky said in a statement. He added, “Everyone has already seen how it works,” while writing about the naval drone fundraising campaign.  

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Reportedly, since the beginning of the invasion, earlier this year, Russia has carried out missile strikes from its ships in the Black Sea and Crimea, a peninsula that Moscow annexed in 2014. Notably, Crimea is also the home to Russia's Black Sea Fleet, this comes after Moscow also moved to block Ukraine’s ports near the sea in order to halt the country’s grain exports. 

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However, it later resumed after a United Nations and Turkey brokered deal was signed unblocking three Ukrainian ports, back in July to ease the global food crisis. Meanwhile, Kyiv has also neither confirmed nor denied its role behind the drone attack last month which the statement on United24 said was the first of its kind carried out exclusively by unmanned devices. It added, “Russia has lost its once-undeniable advantage on the water.”

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(With inputs from agencies) 

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