Ukraine said it has hit more than 110 Russian vessels in nine days in the Sea of Azov, making it one of the most concentrated series of attacks on shipping ever to take place.
The recent campaign against Russian vessels, which started in earnest on July 6, is aimed at disrupting the fuel and logistics supply chains that are sustaining Russia’s military operations in occupied southern Ukraine as well as Crimea.
The number of ships hit in the timeframe has surpassed that of even the Iran-Iraq tanker wars in the 1980s, according to Tomas Alexa, senior analyst at maritime security agency Ambrey, when there were more than 450 attacks over seven years.
“I cannot stress enough how unprecedented this is,” Alexa said. “We have never seen anything so concentrated on a global scale.”
Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, the branch of the country’s military dedicated to drone warfare, said on Tuesday that 11 more Russian ships had been hit overnight, including five tankers, five cargo ships and a tugboat — bringing the total to 116 in nine days.
“The goal of the operation is to systematically disrupt the enemy’s logistics chain,” the force said. “Disabling tankers, cargo ships and auxiliary vessels complicates the export of oil and petroleum products, limits maritime transport capabilities, and reduces the enemy’s ability to supply fuel to its forces and occupation grouping in temporarily occupied Crimea.”
Alexa said the strikes mostly involved drones hitting accommodation blocks on ships or the pipework through which cargoes were pumped into the tanks on board. “These are highly targeted,” he said. “It’s potentially quite a deadly campaign.”
Russia is the world’s largest exporter of wheat, and futures for the grain reached a six-week high on July 10, according to Trading Economics.
About a quarter of Russia’s grain exports normally flow from ports in the Sea of Azov, such as Mariupol and Berdyansk, and out through the Kerch Strait and into the Black Sea. Kyiv has accused Russia of using the route to export grain stolen from Ukrainian territories under Russian occupation.
The level of attacks caused the Russian agricultural ministry to say on Tuesday that grain exports would be redirected away from the Sea of Azov, with Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov accusing Ukraine of “terrorism”.
“What the Ukrainian regime is up to isn’t even piracy,” Lavrov said. “Pirates at least steal and take things for themselves. And here they’re not taking anything for themselves or anyone else. They’re just inflicting damage and spreading fear.”
Attacks on merchant vessels have been common throughout Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Kyiv has typically deployed unmanned surface vessels against ships sanctioned by the US, EU or UK, or used drones to attempt to disrupt the loading of non-sanctioned Russian ships.
This time, by targeting fuel tankers and other support vessels operating in the waters, Ukraine aims to complicate the transport of fuel, ammunition and other supplies, increasing the cost of the Kremlin’s war and the difficulty of maintaining its forces along the 1,200km front line.
It also hopes to disrupt civilian fuel supplies to the Crimean peninsula, which was forcibly annexed by Moscow in 2014. Robert Brovdi, commander of the Unmanned Systems Forces, said Kyiv hoped to encourage an exodus out of the territory, a popular Russian summer holiday destination.
To counter this, Russia has deployed “an unprecedented number of tankers to replenish fuel reserves” to the occupied Crimean peninsula. But his drone forces, he said, “are working intensively to destroy Russia’s shadow fleet in the Sea of Azov”.
The Ukrainian navy said on Tuesday afternoon that it had also destroyed the Russian FSB border patrol ship Izumrud. It said it used a Sargan-3000 uncrewed maritime system, or sea drone, in the attack, which took place near the Russian port city of Novorossiysk. The navy reported casualties, stating there were dead and wounded among the ship’s crew.
The strike was highly symbolic for Kyiv. The Izumrud had taken part in the November 2018 attack on three Ukrainian navy vessels in the Kerch Strait, during which Russians seized the ships and detained 24 Ukrainian crew members.
Russia retaliated against the latest strikes with attacks on four vessels in Ukrainian ports on Monday night, according to Ambrey.
One of the ships hit, a Togo-flagged bulk carrier, had been discharging fertiliser minerals when it was attacked and caught fire. “Three of the vessel’s crew were reported to have been killed, and four seriously injured,” Ambrey said.
Arsenio Dominguez, secretary-general of the International Maritime Organization, said on Monday that he condemned the attacks in the Sea of Azov, noting that “such acts endanger seafarers, threaten the safety of navigation, disrupt global supply chains and undermine the principles upon which international shipping depends”.
Additional reporting by Max Seddon in Berlin and cartography by Steven Bernard in London
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