President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said on Thursday that a Russian missile struck a cargo ship in the Black Sea that was carrying wheat to Egypt, and a Ukrainian military spokesman said that the attack took place in Romanian waters.
If confirmed, it would be the first such direct attack on a civilian vessel in open water since Ukraine established a new maritime export route last year.
Mr. Zelensky said on social media that there were no casualties in the attack, which he said had happened overnight. He did not describe the extent of any damage.
There was no immediate independent confirmation of the claim; and Russia’s defense ministry did not mention it on its Telegram channel.
Captain Dmytro Pletenchuk, the spokesman for Ukraine’s southern command said in a telephone interview that the ship had been hit by a missile from a Russian military jet while it was in “the exclusive economic zone waters of Romania. It was not in the grain corridor of Ukraine.” He said the ship was sailing under the flag of a third country, but did not say which.
An attack in the exclusive economic zone waters of Romania, a NATO member, would not be equivalent to an attack on sovereign territory under international law. Rather, the zone is an area where a government can control economic activity, such as oil drilling.
There was no immediate comment from NATO.
Maritime shipments from Ukraine, one of the world’s most important grain exporters, collapsed at the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in early 2022, threatening global food security. In July that year, a deal brokered by the United Nations and Turkey allowed Ukraine to resume exports through an agreed upon Black Sea corridor.
Russia terminated that deal a year later, however, and began a campaign of attacks on Odesa and other Ukrainian ports, crippling trade flows that are vital to its economy. But the volume of shipments has bounced back as a result of a new maritime corridor set up a few months later, under which ships hugged the coast until they reached the waters of Romania.
“Ukraine’s food deliveries to African and Middle Eastern countries are critical,” Mr. Zelensky said. “We will continue to make every effort to safeguard our ports, the Black Sea, and food exports to global markets. This is Ukraine’s true priority, to protect life, and it should be the priority of all countries.”
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, also condemned the attack.
The Black Sea has been a crucial theater in the war, with Ukraine mounting a series of attacks on Moscow’s navy, including sinking the flagship of the Black Sea fleet in April 2022. In August last year, Russia’s navy boarded a freighter in the Black Sea to enforce a blockade, firing warning shots. But both sides have refrained from attacking such vessels.
A fleet of sea drones Ukraine developed after the Russian invasion in 2022 can target vessels in harbors and while underway, but had been used against military vessels and those supporting Russian logistics. The drones have hit military targets in ports that also serve Russian commercial shipping, including Novorossiysk, a major oil exporting terminal on the Black Sea.
The secretary of Russia’s Security Council, Sergei K. Shoigu, had said on Tuesday that Russia had considered a Turkish proposal for both militaries to refrain from strikes on civilian ships in the Black Sea and energy infrastructure within each country, but the talks ended last month after Ukraine’s incursion into the Kursk region.
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