A Russian missile hit a ship carrying wheat in the Black Sea late on Wednesday, Ukrainian authorities said.
“Fortunately, there were no casualties, according to preliminary reports,” Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said in a social media post.
He did not identity the ship other than to say that it was heading to Egypt and that the incident happened “right after it [the ship] left Ukrainian waters”.
In a statement later on Thursday, the Ukrainian navy confirmed that the vessel was the 27,300-dwt, Saint Kitts and Nevis-flagged Aya (built 1997) — a ship managed by UAE-based VRS Maritime Services.
The attack from Russian cruise missiles, probably of the Kh-22 type launched from Tu-22 aircraft, took place at 11:03pm local time on Wednesday outside Ukrainian waters after the ship was leaving Chornomorsk.
Pictures posted by Zelensky show extensive damage caused to the vessel bow at deck level.
According to the Ukrainian military, the material damage caused to the ship is “significant”.
VRS managers at the company's offices in Dubai and Piraeus did not respond to a request for comment.
MarineTraffic data suggests that the ship's manoeuvrability is impaired, with the vessel sailing at a minimal speed of 0.4 knots about 23 miles (42 kilometres) off the Romanian port of Constanta.
Ambrey, however, citing AIS data, said that “the vessel managed to sail to Romania under its own power, indicating that its propulsion system was not compromised”.
No Russian official source is known to have commented on the incident yet.
Rare incident
Seaborne Ukraine grain exports had been going smoothly so far after the beleaguered country managed about a year to set up a Black Sea corridor under its own protection, replacing a previous, UN-led scheme.
Despite the fact that both Ukraine and Russia threatened to regard each other's commercial ships as potential targets after the UN corridor expired, the number of attacks on vessels since has been minimal.
In some of the few occasions when they happened, it was Ukraine that attacked small Russian tankers with the argument that they were carrying fuel for the Russian army.
On the other hand, one seafarer died on a Greek-controlled bulker in a Ukrainian port after Russian missiles hit the terminal.
The bulk of the trade, both out of Ukrainian and Russian ports, has been going on more or less smoothly.
More than 2,000 ship trips have left the Ukrainian ports of Odesa, Yuzhny/Pivdennyi and Chornomorsk.
There is yet to be a major claim related to the Black Sea grain trades.
War risk cover for Ukrainian grain exports has been provided mainly by the commercial marine insurance market.
