Russian tanker damaged in Ukrainian drone attack, state media says

Russia’s Tass says the chemical tanker SIG received a hole in the engine room near the waterline in the attack.

A Russian tanker has been damaged in a Ukrainian drone attack in the Black Sea, Russian media has reported, in the latest sign of Kyiv’s growing focus on naval warfare.

Russia’s chemical tanker SIG received a hole in the engine room near the waterline, Russia’s marine agency said on Saturday.

Tugboats were deployed to assist the tanker, which is under United States sanctions for assisting Russian forces in Syria, after the attack rendered it incapable of operating on its own, Russia’s Tass news agency reported.

“They will deal with it now on whether to take it under tow or not,” Tass quoted Russia’s rescue agency as saying.

“It is standing at anchor for the moment. The machine room suffered some damage, not too badly.”

No casualties were reported.

Traffic on the bridge connecting the Russian-controlled Crimean peninsula with the Russian mainland stopped for several hours before resuming early on Saturday, Russia’s traffic information centre said.

Russia-installed officials said explosions heard in the area were not the result of any direct attack on the strategically important bridge, which was targeted in separate attacks in July and October last year.

The latest drone attack comes after Ukrainian officials said on Friday that their drones had severely damaged the Russian warship Olenegorsky Gornyak.

Moscow said it had repelled an attempted attack on Novorossiysk naval base, which marked the first assault on a commercial Russian port since the war began in February last year.

Analysts say Kyiv, which lost most of its navy after Moscow annexed the Crimean peninsula in 2014, wants to demonstrate its ability to hit Russian naval forces far from home after being dominated on the sea front for most of the war.

Ukraine’s navy is far outgunned by Russia’s naval forces but has scored a number of significant victories through the use of unconventional weapons and tactics, including the sinking of the flagship guided missile cruiser Moskva in April 2022.