The Orion drone was shot down by Ukrainian soldiers using the UK-supplied Starstreak missile.
Ukrainian soldiers have been filmed celebrating after shooting down a Russian drone in the ongoing war. The location or date of the incident has not been revealed in the video, but it appears that British Starstreak missiles are shooting down a Russian military Orion drone, Express said.
The laser-guided missile travels at more than three times the speed of sound. It is part of the British aid to Ukraine.
#Ukraine: The first video of a UK-supplied Martlet multirole missile – not a Starstreak as commonly claimed – in action with Ukrainian forces. As reported, it knocked out a Russian Orlan-10 UAV and this seems credible given the response, but we can’t tell exactly what was hit. pic.twitter.com/i6sP6649h6
† Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) Apr 10, 2022
The Orion Combat UAV, the most advanced drone, has been used extensively by the Russian military in the war in Ukraine. According to Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, the Orion was tested for strike missions in Syria in 2019.
The video of the Ukrainian rocket attack was shared by a soldier Yuriy Kochevenko. He thanked Britain for providing the missile system and said Kiev is making excellent use of support from friends.
In the video, a group of Ukrainian soldiers can be heard triumphantly as the drone comes down. “There is contact, we destroyed the sh**,” one of the soldiers in the video says, according to the Daily Mail.
This is yet another shock the Ukrainian armed forces have delivered to the Russian army.
Last week, a Russian military helicopter was split in two after it was attacked by the Starstreak missile used by the Ukrainian military. A video of the incident circulating online shows the tail of the Mi28N breaking after being hit by the missile.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday that thousands of Russian troops are gathering for another offensive in the east, and Russia said it would not halt its military operation in Ukraine for further peace talks.
Russian forces also pushed for control of the southern port city of Mariupol, the hub between Russian-occupied territories to the west and east and already devastated by weeks of siege and bombardment.
About a quarter of Ukraine’s 44 million inhabitants have been displaced from their homes, cities have been turned to rubble and thousands of people have been killed or injured – many of them civilians.
