A Russian warship has fired warning shots at a cargo ship in the south-western Black Sea — the first time Russia has fired on merchant shipping beyond Ukraine since exiting a landmark UN-brokered grain deal last month.
Key points:
- Russia said the patrol ship opened fire after the cargo ship’s captain failed to respond to a request to halt for an inspection
- The Russian military boarded the vessel and then allowed it to continue on its way
- The incident is expected to ratchet up already acute concerns among shipowners, insurers and commodity traders
It comes as Ukraine says more civilians have been killed by Russian shelling and Moscow reports continued drone incursions across the border.
Russia last month halted participation in the Black Sea grain deal that allowed Ukraine to export agricultural produce via the Black Sea and Moscow cautioned that it deemed all ships heading to Ukrainian waters to be potentially carrying weapons.
Russia said in a statement on Sunday that its Vasily Bykov patrol ship had fired automatic weapons on the Palau-flagged Sukru Okan vessel after the ship’s captain failed to respond to a request to halt for an inspection.
Russia said the vessel was making its way towards the Ukrainian port of Izmail.
“To forcibly stop the vessel, warning fire was opened from automatic weapons,” the Russian defence ministry said.
The Russian military boarded the vessel with the help of a Ka-29 helicopter and then allowed it to continue on its way, the ministry said.
A Turkish defence ministry official said he had heard an incident had taken place involving a ship heading for Romania, and that Ankara was looking into it.
Baby girl killed in shelling
In Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, seven people — including a 23-day-old baby girl — were killed in Russian shelling on Sunday, the country’s Internal Affairs Ministry said.
Artillery shelling in the village of Shiroka Balka, on the banks of the Dnieper River killed a family — a husband, wife, 12-year-old boy and 23-day-old girl — and another resident.
Two men were killed in the neighbouring village of Stanislav, where a woman was also wounded.
Ukrainian military officials said earlier that Kyiv’s forces had made progress in the south, claiming some success near a key village in the southern Zaporizhzhia region and capturing other unspecified territories.
Ukraine’s General Staff said they had “partial success” around the tactically important Robotyne area in the Zaporizhzhia region, a key Russian strong point that Ukraine needs to retake in order to continue pushing south towards Melitopol.
“There are liberated territories. The defence forces are working,” General Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, commander of Ukraine’s southern forces, said of the southern front.
In Russia, the defence ministry reported on Sunday that air defence systems shot down three drones over the Belgorod region and one over the neighbouring Kursk region, both of which border Ukraine.
There were no casualties or damage caused by the incidents, the ministry said.
Concerns in commodities sector
Firing on a merchant vessel is expected to ratchet up already acute concerns among shipowners, insurers and commodity traders about the potential dangers of getting ensnared in the Black Sea — the main route that both Ukraine and Russia use to get their agricultural produce to market.
Russia and Ukraine are two of the world’s top agricultural producers, and major players in the wheat, barley, maize, rapeseed, rapeseed oil, sunflower seed and sunflower oil markets. Russia is also dominant in the fertiliser market.
Since Russia left the Black Sea grain deal, both Moscow and Kyiv have issued warnings and carried out attacks that have sent jitters through global commodity, oil and shipping markets.
Russia has said it will treat any ships approaching Ukrainian ports as potential military vessels, and their flag countries as combatants on the Ukrainian side. Russia also struck Ukrainian grain facilities on the Danube.
Ukraine responded with a similar threat to ships approaching Russian or Russian-held Ukrainian ports. Ukraine also attacked a Russian oil tanker and a warship at its Novorossiysk naval base, next door to a major grain and oil port.
Ukraine and the West say Russia’s steps amount to a de-facto blockade of Ukrainian ports that threatens to cut off the flow of wheat and sunflower seeds from Ukraine to world markets.
Russia dismisses that interpretation and says the West failed to implement a parallel agreement easing rules for its own food and fertiliser exports.
Reuters/AP