On Saturday night, a Russian oil tanker was hit by a Ukrainian drone filled with explosives in the Black Sea, which incapacitated it.
“The tanker was well loaded with fuel, so the ‘fireworks’ were seen from afar,” an unidentified Ukrainian source told Reuters.
The tanker was identified as the SIG, which was sanctioned by the United States in 2019 for helping Russian forces in Syria, per The New York Times. No one was hurt onboard and the fuel did not leak into the water, but the ship’s engine room was damaged in the attack. A tugboat was dispatched to bring it into port.
Vasyl Maluk, head of the Security Service of Ukraine, confirmed to the Times that the attack was part of the Ukrainian counteroffensive in the war, calling the attacks of Russian ships a “logical” and “effective” move for Ukraine.
On Saturday, Ukraine officially warned that any vessels leaving or entering six major Russian Black Sea ports — Anapa, Gelendzhik, Novorossiysk, Sochi, Taman and Tuapse — would be in a “war risk area” and be a possible target, reported Reuters.
Following Russia’s attack on Ukrainian grain ports last month, Ukraine has made several moves to bring the war to Russian soil — especially in the last week.
Two drones hit a skyscraper in Moscow within 48 hours of each other earlier this week, reported The Associated Press. In another case, a drone disabled a Russian warship near Russia’s largest port, Novorossiysk, on Friday, per CNN.
The country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenksy said that bringing the fight to Russian soil was “inevitable, natural and absolutely fair,” he told the Times. The war “is returning to the territory of Russia — to its symbolic centers and military bases.”
As for what the rest of the war will look like, Keir Giles, who is a Russia expert at Chatham House and author of several books on Russia’s foreign policy told CNN, that while “it’s impossible to tell how this will develop ... we should certainly expect at least this level of a steady drumbeat of demonstrations of Russian vulnerability to continue.”