Two bridges have been blown up in the Russian region of Belgorod in a rare attack deep inside Russian territory. The air strikes, which saw two bridges mined by the Russian military used to hide stocks of ammunition blown up, were a demonstration of a new tactic by the Ukrainian military, which has been using inexpensive first-person-view (FPV) drones for surveillance in recent weeks.

Photographs taken by the Ukrainian military showed the drone they used for the air strike under the bridge with a fiber optic cable attached to it. The drone was apparently used to scout the target and then detonate itself to set off the ammunition, which then blew up a large part of the bridge. “It became clear that something was going on there,” a representative for Ukraine’s 58th Separate Motorized Infantry Brigade told CNN. “We saw the mines, and we struck.”

Units of the 58th Brigade, a Ukrainian special operations formation, destroyed the bridges inside the Belgorod region, Russia, in air strikes on May 19 and May 23. Ukrainian servicemen photographed the FPV drone they used to scout the targets under the bridges as part of the operation.

The 58th Brigade said that it became suspicious that something was being stored under the bridge because of activity around the structure, according to CNN. Regular reconnaissance drones could not be used without risking losing signal while being positioned underneath the bridge, so it used a ground-based FPV drone with a fiber optic cable to scout under it.

The reconnaissance drone found “a significant amount of ammunition, including anti-tank mines,” the brigade spokesperson said. The drone was then detonated to trigger the explosion. Videos released by the brigade showed the first drone approaching the bridge, scouting the cache of ammunition hidden under the bridge and then detonating itself, causing a large explosion.

A second camera some distance away caught the resulting explosion from a distance. CNN geolocated the first of the two bridges destroyed in the May 19 strike to the Russian region of Belgorod, which borders Ukraine’s Kharkiv region. Buoyed by the success of that operation, the 58th Brigade reportedly then checked another bridge in the region, which it also found had been mined, allowing it to carry out a similar strike in the area.

“(We) saw an opportunity and took it,” the brigade said. Both strikes cost Ukraine only a relatively modest sum, between 25,000 and 30,000 hryvnias, or about $600 to $725. Under normal circumstances, destroying such a long-range target with bridges without the drone would require guided missiles or precision-guided munitions. Ukraine has previously resorted to using U.S.-supplied HIMARS rocket systems to attack targets in Russia’s Kursk region. HIMARS systems, which are short-range rocket artillery launchers, cost millions of dollars per unit. Rockets for the HIMARS system also run to tens of thousands of dollars apiece. In comparison, the drones Ukraine used in the Belgorod attacks cost no more than a high-end smartphone.

First-Person-View Drones

The Belgorod strikes are just the latest example of how Ukraine is using relatively inexpensive drones to great effect in the war. Last month, Ukrainian forces also destroyed or damaged dozens of Russian military aircraft by smuggling small drones close to Russian airfields before firing on the parked aircraft.

In April, FPV drones were used to knock out a Russian S-400 air defense missile system. And in late March, a convoy of Russian military vehicles was also destroyed in an ambush by FPV drones. “These types of operations show how even modest technology can achieve outsized results when used creatively,” military analyst Mykola Bielieskov wrote on Twitter.

The use of such drones has become necessary in part because Ukraine lacks more advanced Western military aid. With Russian forces pressing an advantage in the east, and Moscow launching near-daily drone and missile strikes on Ukrainian cities, destroying ammunition dumps deep inside Russian territory was also important from the Ukrainian perspective, offering a rare win against Russian forces.

The attacks come at a time when Ukraine has found itself on the defensive in the face of Russian gains in the east and a lack of political will in Washington to supply it with the advanced weaponry needed to turn the tide in the Donbas, the eastern industrial heartland that has become the focus of the war.

Russia Says ‘No Questions’

As the strikes were being made public by Ukrainian forces, Russian leader Vladimir Putin also appeared to pour cold water on any possibility of a ceasefire or an end to the war during an unscripted speech earlier on May 24 in which he appeared to reject any possibility of a deal with Ukraine. Moscow has continued to reject Kyiv’s demands to end the war.

“We won’t be signing any documents now and in the foreseeable future that will mean questions about the future of our country,” Putin said. Asked about the bridge attacks by Reuters, a Russian Defense Ministry spokesperson said “no questions” when asked to comment. Russia has so far made no public comment on the Belgorod bridge attacks.

The fact that the ammunition dumps under the bridges were targeted by Russian forces indicates that Moscow had been planning to keep supplies flowing to its troops operating near the Ukrainian border, or planning a major counter-offensive at some point in the future. At the same time, however, destroying the bridges will have disrupted supply lines to Russian forces at a time when Kyiv is already having a difficult time defending eastern Ukraine.

By Michael Chessington for Ukraineworld.com. Source photo by 58th Separate Motorized Infantry Brigade.