Ukraine showed that it had attacked a ferry that provided important logistics to Russian troops, as satellite photographs showed after the attack.
Ukrainian military spokesman Dmytro Pletenchuk said Kyiv was Thursday’s attack on the 358-foot Conro Trader ro-ro cargo ship in the port of Kavkaz near the Kerch Strait in Russia’s Krasnodar territory.
Authorities in Krasnodar had previously accused Kyiv of carrying out “another terrorist attack,” and a video shared on social media showed flames and smoke rising from the sky.
Pletenchuk said the ferry supplies fuel, lubricants and weapons to Russian forces and that the attack “should diminish the possible functions of our enemy in places where it is actively participating in hostilities. “
Radio Liberty’s Crimea. Realities project, funded through the United States, reported that there were at least 30 fuel tanks on the ferry.
Satellite photographs through @cxemu show severe damage to the rail and car boarding terminal in Russia’s Black Sea port of Kavkaz. Yesterday, a Ukrainian military cruise missile Neptune hit the loading and unloading ferry Conro Trader (center), causing a massive fuel fire. https://t. co/RSjGQs51CF pic. twitter. com/yJNjwJgo6M
“The ferry sank,” Pletenchuk told Radio Svoboda, the Ukrainian affiliate of Radio Liberty, on Friday, according to a translation.
He did not specify how the operation was carried out, according to a defense source in Kiev, Kiev used a Neptune cruise missile.
Satellite photographs from Planet Labs showed severe damage to the terminal’s vehicle loading and exercise point near the Kerch Strait, which connects the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea.
Pletenchuk said two other ferries at the port are not operating because they are undergoing repairs. “Residents of occupied Ukrainian Crimea reacted by gathering at fuel stations,” he said.
Newsweek has contacted the Russian Defense Ministry for comment.
Although its military is dwarfed by Russia’s, kyiv has torn apart much of Moscow’s Black Sea fleet through repeated drone and missile moves near the occupied Crimean peninsula that kyiv has vowed to reconquer.
Ukraine also continued its crackdown on Russian military infrastructure and oil processing sites. An oil terminal in the Rostov region city of Proletarsk, which holds up to $200 million worth of fuel, has been on fire for about a week after a drone strike. on August 20.
Radio Svoboda published satellite images showing the fire at the Rosrezerva oil depot, and open-source intelligence resources reported that 14 fuel tanks had been completely destroyed, 4 destroyed, and 16 remained intact.
Amid complaints from citizens that the government was not doing enough to fight the blaze and the federal government’s relative silence, Russian social media reported on Saturday that the fire was spreading to residential buildings.
Brendan Cole is a senior reporter at Newsweek in London, UK. He focuses on Russia and Ukraine, specifically the war unleashed through Moscow. He also covers other areas of geopolitics, adding China.
Brendan joined Newsweek in 2018 from International Business Times and, in addition to English, studies Russian and French.
You can contact Brendan by emailing b. cole@newsweek. com or by following him on his X @brendanmarkcole account.
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