Ukraine war briefing: Kiev accuses Moscow of recklessness after oil tanker sinks in storm | Ukraine

Ukrainian officials on Sunday accused Moscow of recklessness after an oil tanker sank and another vessel ran aground in the Kerch Strait between the Russian mainland and occupied Crimea during stormy weather. Dmytro PletenchukUkraine’s navy spokesman, said: “These are quite old Russian tankers. You cannot go to sea in such a storm. The Russians violated the operating rules. The result is an accident.”

The Volgoneft-212 tanker broke in half after being hit by a large wave, with video showing its bow sticking vertically out of the water. One of the 15 crew members was killed in the incident, while 11 others were taken to hospital.

The tanker was carrying 4,300 tonnes of low-grade heavy fuel oil, known as mazut, and footage also showed a black slick of oil around the vessel. Commentators said the oil products, if spilled into the Black Sea, would cause serious ecological damage to a marine environment already badly affected by war.

Shortly afterwards, another tanker, the 132-metre long Volgoneft 239, was found adrift in the same area after sustaining damage. Russia’s Emergencies Ministry later said it had run aground 80m off the coast near the port of Taman at the southern end of the Kerch Strait, which runs between the Russian mainland and occupied Crimea.

The ministry later wrote on Telegram that efforts to evacuate the 14-man crew had been suspended due to bad weather. The ministry said rescue teams were in contact with the ship, which had all facilities on board necessary to ensure the crew’s lives were not in danger.

President Vladimir Putin ordered the government to set up a task force to handle the rescue operation and mitigate the impact of the fuel spillnews agencies quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying after Putin met with the emergency and environment ministers.

Ukraine’s SBU security service said on Sunday it had destroyed 40 rail cars carrying fuel for Russian troops in an area of ​​the Zaporizhzhia region that Moscow holds in southern Ukraine. The SBU said one of its units had organized a sabotage operation that damaged a railway line as the train moved near the village of Oleksiivka in a Russian-held part of the Zaporizhzhia region. The train was stopped, with tankers on fire, and army units fired US-supplied Himars missiles at the site, it said. The account could not be independently verified and Russia had no immediate comment.

Russia said on Sunday its forces had captured villages in two key frontline areas in eastern Ukraine as they advance on the supply hub of Pokrovsk and the industrial city of Kurakhove. The Defense Ministry said in a daily briefing that troops had “liberated” the village of Vesely Gai south of Kurakhove and the village of Pushkine south of Pokrovsk, both in the Donetsk region.

A Ukrainian drone hit a campus of Russia’s National Guard in the Russian region of Chechnya on Sunday, as Kyiv continues to fight back from a mass airstrike by Moscow. Footage on social media showed a drone whizzing low over the Chechen capital, Grozny, 800 kilometers (500 miles) southeast of the front line in Ukraine, before exploding. No injuries were reported. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov confirmed the drone hit a site belonging to Akhmat Grozny’s riot police battalion and said two other drones had been shot down by the air force.