Reuters is reporting that Russian warships shelled Millennial Spirit, a Moldovan-flagged chemical tanker, and Namura Queen, a Panamanian-flagged cargo ship due to load grain near Odessa port in the Black Sea on Friday, one day after Russia began a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. A total of three non-military vessels have now been hit since the start of the invasion. On Thursday, the Turkish-owned Yasa Jupiter cargo ship was struck off Odessa.
Ukraine’s infrastructure ministry said that the Millennial Spirit was carrying 600 tonnes of diesel at the time of the attack from a Russian military ship.
Earlier on Friday Moldova’s naval agency said the crew of the Millennial Spirit was Russian and that two of them had been seriously injured.
Civil bunkerer ship MILLENNIAL SPIRIT
Chemical Tanker, IMO 7392610 was reportedly hit by Russian missile when standing in 12+ miles from Odessa port.This is violation of international law pic.twitter.com/MV9whPOaGX
— OSINT Academy (@ua_intelligence) February 25, 2022
F—k Russians who support Putin😡👎🤮
Adolf Putin is now just another punk war criminal. Hopefully the Ukrainians can defeat the invaders and Putin will be deposed. They are putting up a strong fight and the US is supplying more Javelins to use against Russian armor.
Quick check via VesselFinder shows Millennial Spirit having vanished from AIS while underway in “zone of operations” 3 days ago, Namura Queen disappearing while underway about 11 hours ago some distance S of Odessa after having briefly anchored off Odessa on the 25th after what looked like a normal approach via VTS, Yasa Jupiter at anchor in a location in Turkey (Dilovasi) making recent attack pretty unlikely.
So one likely, one “hmm,” one not likely.
One is too many.