Jens Asbjørn Bøgen
According to Russia, the carriers were transporting military cargo.
A weekend departure ended in disaster when a commercial vessel carrying grain was struck by incoming fire just outside a major port.
The vessel was the Golden Leo. Flying the flag of Guinea-Bissau, the Turkish-owned craft had just set sail with a cargo of corn.
The Kyiv Post cites reports from the Ukrainian Air Force stating Russia launched three cruise missiles, one of which made a direct hit on the starboard side of the vessel, instantly igniting a massive fire that tore through the ship.
The Ukrainian Sea Ports Authority reported that ten people lost their lives in the blast.
The victims included a sixty-six-year-old Ukrainian port pilot and nine foreign crew members from Syria and India, whose ages ranged from nineteen to fifty-three.
Emergency workers rushed to the scene to extinguish the flames. Rescue teams managed to save eight other sailors, who were quickly taken to a hospital in Odesa. Meanwhile, local prosecutors have launched a formal war crimes investigation.
War on Food
Officials view the incident as part of a deliberate campaign. Mykola Kalashnyk, the minister in charge of regional development, stated that the strike deliberately targeted civilian shipping to disrupt global food supplies.
Moscow offered a very different explanation. In a statement, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed its forces hit “two bulk carrier-type seagoing vessels carrying military cargo,” though it provided no evidence to support the claim.
This latest strike fits a worrying pattern for international trade. In the first two weeks of July alone, seventeen civilian vessels and twenty-three port facilities were targeted, according to the Ukrainian Sea Ports Authority.
Some shipowners now refuse to send their vessels into the area altogether.
Danger has become a daily reality here. Just one day earlier, another commercial ship flying the flag of Antigua and Barbuda was hit, leaving one person dead and damaging local warehouses. Days earlier, a Friday night strike on a third vessel left four more crew members wounded.
