Russian tanker near Crimea damaged in Ukrainian drone attack

MOSCOW — A Russian oil tanker in the Kerch Strait near Crimea was damaged in a Ukrainian seaborne drone strike, Russian officials said on Saturday, in another attack by Kiev using an unmanned vehicle to hit Russian positions far from the 17-month-old war’s front line.

Following the night-time Ukrainian naval drone attack on the Russian-flagged tanker SIG, emergency services were working to secure the heavily damaged ship in the Kerch Strait.

Water that penetrated through a breach in the tanker’s hull was being pumped out, Russia’s sea rescue agency said.

Despite the damage to the engine room, the fuel-laden vessel continued to float freely on the water between the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea and Russia.

No one was injured in the attack and no fuel leaked out, the agency said.

The tanker was hit and damaged by a drone boat loaded with explosives in the early hours of Saturday. Ukrainian state media released a video purporting to show the drone hitting the vessel, although Kiev has not yet publicly taken credit for the attack.

But the head of Ukraine’s domestic intelligence service described attacks against Russian ships and the Russian-made Kerch Bridge connecting the occupied Crimean peninsula to Russia as “legal.”

Vasyl Malyuk, the head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), said on Telegram it was an “absolutely logical and effective step” against the enemy.

“Such special operations are carried out in Ukraine’s territorial waters and are perfectly legal,” the SBU chief said.

In contrast, Russian commentators said Ukraine had tried to trigger an ecological disaster with the “terrorist attack” against a civilian ship.

On Friday, the amphibious Russian landing ship Olenegorski Gornyak suffered serious damage in a Ukrainian drone strike near Russia’s port of Novorossiysk - an important location for the country’s oil exports.

The ship was the biggest Russian naval vessel to be put out of action since the sinking of the cruiser Moskva in April 2022.

The two sea attacks came after Russia withdrew from a critical UN agreement that enabled grain to be safely exported across the Black Sea and sold on to the world market. Moscow has also stepped up its attacks on Ukraine’s agriculture infrastructure, including the inland grain port of Izmail and at the Black Sea port of Odessa.