Moscow hit back with missiles yesterday after Ukraine carried out a drone strike overnight on a Russian tanker in the Kerch Strait, a day after another of its ships was hit in the Black Sea.
The Russian strike was the latest against critical infrastructure since Moscow exited a deal last month that had ensured Ukrainian grain exports despite the ongoing conflict.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said a Russian strike that included hypersonic Kinzhal missiles had targeted Motor Sich, a maker of plane and helicopter engines and other components, in the western region of Khmelnytskyi.
The firm is one of several “strategic” firms taken over by Ukraine’s defence ministry last November.
Motor Sich’s headquarters are in the partially Russian-controlled region of Zaporizhzhia in southeast Ukraine, whose governor also reported Russian missile strikes, though it was unclear is the company was targeted.
In his evening address, Zelensky remained defiant, insisting that “no matter how many such Russian attacks there are, they will still do nothing for the enemy”. This latest strike came after Ukraine claimed it “blew up” a Russian tanker, the ‘SIG’, that was transporting fuel for Russian troops, a Ukrainian security source told AFP.
The tanker was hit at around 11:20pm on Friday south of the Kerch Strait, Russia’s Federal Agency for Sea and Inland Water Transport said.
The ship was holed at the waterline in the area of the engine room but was still afloat, the agency said. In a video obtained by AFP purporting to show the attack, a vessel is seen approaching a large ship before the connection cuts off.
The Ukrainian source said the “successful special operation”, which involved a naval drone and explosives, was carried out jointly with the navy in Ukrainian territorial waters.
The SIG oil and chemical tanker is under US sanctions for supplying jet fuel to Russian forces in Syria, who are supporting President Bashar al-Assad.
The Russian foreign ministry condemned the attack on a “civilian vessel, which not only threatened to kill its crew but also posed the risk of a large-scale environmental disaster”.
The ministry said the crew had not been injured. Traffic on a key bridge across the Kerch Strait linking the Moscow-annexed Crimea peninsula to Russia’s mainland resumed early yesterday after a three-hour halt, according to the Russian highways information centre’s Telegram channel.
Crimea has been disrupted by several strikes throughout the war but it has seen more frequent attacks in recent weeks. Russian forces yesterday downed a drone over the sea near Sevastopol, city governor Mikhail Razvozhayev said.
Ukrainian drone strikes on Crimea in July blew up an ammunition depot and damaged the strategic bridge across the Kerch Strait.
Tensions have risen on the Black Sea overall since Russia pulled out of the agreement protecting grain exports via the shipping hub during the conflict.
On Friday, Ukraine struck the Olenegorsky Gornyak vessel at the Novorossiysk base in southern Russia, a Ukrainian security source told AFP, “to show that Ukraine can attack any Russian warship in that zone”.