damages

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the Russian attacks ‘had no … military purpose whatsoever’.

Russian forces have attacked two Ukrainian ports, damaging three Turkish-owned vessels, including a ship carrying food supplies, according to Ukrainian officials and a shipowner.

Friday’s attacks by Russian forces targeted Chornomorsk and Odesa ports in Ukraine’s southwestern Odesa region on the Black Sea. A Ukrainian navy spokesperson told the Reuters news agency that three Turkish-owned vessels were damaged in total, but did not provide additional details.

Posting video footage on social media of firefighters tackling a blaze on board what he described as a “civilian vessel” in Chornomorsk, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the Russian attacks “had no … military purpose whatsoever”.

“This proves once again that Russians not only fail to take the current opportunity for diplomacy seriously enough, but also continue the war precisely to destroy normal life in Ukraine,” Zelenskyy said.

“It is crucial that … the world maintains the proper moral compass: who is dragging out this war and who is working to end it with peace, who is using ballistic missiles against civilian life, and who is striking the targets that influence the functioning of Russia’s war machine,” he said.

Today, the Russian army carried out a missile strike on our Odesa region, and last night there was also a Russian attack on Odesa’s energy infrastructure. At one point we talked about the situation in this city and the people of Odesa with President Trump.

Today’s Russian… pic.twitter.com/gIgXUlc4AJ

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) December 12, 2025

Zelenskyy did not name the vessel, but it was identified as the Panama-flagged and Turkish-owned Cenk T by Reuters, which matched cranes and buildings to satellite imagery of Chornomorsk port.

The ship’s owners, Cenk Shipping, confirmed it was attacked at about 4pm local time (14:00 GMT). There were no casualties among the crew, and damage to the ship was limited, it added.

An employee of a private company was also injured in a separate attack on Odesa port, where a cargo loader was also damaged, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Oleksii Kuleba confirmed.

He added that Russia had used drones and ballistic missiles in the port strikes, which were “aimed at civilian logistics and commercial shipping”.

Ukraine’s three large Black Sea ports in the Odesa region are a key economic artery for Kyiv.

Late on Friday, Turkiye’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed the vessel had been attacked in Chornomorsk port. It added that there were no reports of injured Turkish citizens.

The ministry said in a statement that the attack “validates our previously stated concerns regarding the spread of the ongoing war in the region to the Black Sea, and its impact on maritime security and freedom of navigation”.

“We reiterate the need for an arrangement whereby, in order to prevent escalation in the Black Sea, attacks targeting navigational safety as well as the parties’ energy and port infrastructure are suspended,” it added.

Hours earlier, in talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Turkmenistan’s capital of Ashgabat, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for calm in the Black Sea and suggested that a limited ceasefire for energy facilities and ports could be beneficial for regional security.

Turkiye, which has the longest Black Sea coastline at approximately 1,329km (826 miles), has grown increasingly alarmed at the escalating attacks in its back yard and has offered to mediate between Kyiv and Moscow.

The attacks come just days after Putin promised retaliation and threatened to cut “Ukraine off from the sea” for Kyiv’s maritime drone attacks on Moscow’s “shadow fleet” – unmarked tankers thought to be used to circumvent oil sanctions – in the Black Sea.

Kyiv says the tankers are Moscow’s main source of funding for its almost four-year-old war. It has also tried to squeeze Russian revenues by expanding attacks to the Caspian Sea, where it struck a major oil rig this week.

Dec. 8 (UPI) — After a water leak damaged hundreds of books this morning at the Louvre in Paris, labor unions voted to strike against the iconic art museum.

Rolling walk-outs are set to begin Dec. 15. If all 2,100 employees join, it could cause closures during a peak season.

The strike notice said the unions no longer want to negotiate with museum Director Laurence des Cars.

It said “every day, museum spaces are closed well beyond the provisions of the guaranteed opening plan, due to insufficient staffing, technical failures and the building’s aging condition.”

“Staff are struggling with ever-increasing workloads, an increasingly harsh approach to human resources and contradictory directives that prevent a calm public service,” the notice said. Le Monde reported that the number of visits to the occupational psychologist rose from 37 in 2022 to 146 in 2024.

The museum suffered a water leak in its libraries that damaged hundreds of books, it announced earlier Monday.

The leak was discovered in late November and announced Sunday by Francis Steinbock, deputy administrator of the Louvre. Steinbock said up to 400 documents were damaged by the leak from one of the three library rooms in the museum’s Egyptian antiquities department. But no works of art were damaged, he said.

The pieces that were damaged were archaeology journals, mostly from the 18th and 19th centuries, that researchers consulted. Steinbock said dehumidifiers are in the room and the items are being dried one page at a time.

“No ancient works were affected,” said Hélène Guichard, director of the Egyptian antiquities department. “And the Louvre’s rapid and efficient response to the incident greatly limited the damage.”

The French Democratic Confederation of Labor, a union that represents some of the museum’s workers, posted on LinkedIn: “This new incident confirms a situation that has been deteriorating for too long, as the trade unions have been constantly alerting, including the CFDT-CULTURE.”

“Fragile infrastructure, a lack of strategic visibility on the work being carried out, and poor working conditions mean that the protection of the collections and the safety of staff and visitors remain insufficiently guaranteed,” it said. Union leaders would meet Monday morning to “decide on the next steps to be taken,” it added.

An October report by France’s Cour des Comptes, a public audit agency, was critical of the museum’s excessive spending on art “to the detriment of the maintenance and renovation of buildings.”

The Louvre is in a former palace, originally built as a fortress in the 12th century. The building’s deterioration has become an ongoing issue. A show was canceled in 2023 because pipes in the walls burst. In November, weak beams caused a gallery to close.

A major renovation was announced in January by President Emmanuel Macron and the Louvre’s director Laurence des Cars. Its goal is to ease overcrowding with a new entrance and a new room specifically for the Mona Lisa. Included are infrastructure repair and the outdated security system, which recently contributed to the jewel heist.

Steinbock said in a TV interview that the ventilation and heating network, which operates with water pipes, is scheduled to be replaced in September 2026.