Los ukrainian underwater drones attacked this Friday and this Saturday two oil tankers belonging to the “Shadow Fleet” o Russia’s “Ghost Fleet” who sailed in the waters of the Black Sea.
With this offensive, kyiv has opened a new silent front in the war: that of naval drones against the “ghost fleet” that the Kremlin uses to evade international sanctions and sell your oil without limitations on price.
The attack against Russia is no longer waged only with missiles and tanks, but with unmanned vessels loaded with explosives that seek to strangle the Russian safe: the crude oil transportation.
According to sources from the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), the naval drones used are model systems Sea Babyaccording to Ukrinformwhich indicated that the operation was carried out by SBU and the Navy from Ukraine.
The information comes after the Turkish Government indicated that the oil tanker Viratflying the Gambian flag, was attacked in the Black Sea last night and that another, the Kairosalso suffered a fire yesterday due to an “external factor.”
Both ships, belonging to the so-called Russian “ghost fleet”, were sailing without cargo towards the puerto ruso de Novorossiyskone of the main oil export nodes in the region.
Virat y Kairos
He Virata Gambian-flagged oil tanker, which had already been sanctioned by the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union for its role in transporting Russian crude oil, avoiding restrictions.
The ship was a few dozen miles off the Turkish coast when it was hit, —first on Friday and again on Saturday—suffering damage above the waterline but without serious fires, as reported by the Turkish Ministry of Transport.
The attack on the other ship, the Kairosalso flying the Gambian flag and weighing about 80,000 tons and about 275 meters in length, caused a fire that forced the evacuation of its 25 crew members while Turkish tugboats fought the flames.
This vessel had left an Indian port and was also heading to Novorossiysk, consolidating a skipper: sanctioned ships, repeated routes and a key Russian destination in the energy business.
He Sea Babydeveloped by the SBU, is a naval surface drone (sometimes described as “submarine” because of its ability to navigate along the water) loaded with explosives and remotely guided to its target.
Since 2022, this type of system has been evolving in range, payload and precision, and has become a centerpiece of the Ukrainian counteroffensive in the Black Sea, forcing Russia to move part of its war fleet away from the Ukrainian coast.
Until now, the main focus has been military ships and infrastructure targets, but these attacks raise the stakes by entering the oil logisticskey to financing the invasion.
For kyiv, hitting sanctioned ships that are part of the sanctions evasion network is a way to pressure the West to move from diplomatic protests to effective action against this “ghost fleet.”
The “ghost fleet”
Russia relies from 2022 on a network of hundreds of tankersoften old, poorly regulated and registered under flags of convenience, to circumvent price caps, partial embargoes and restrictions on Western insurance.
That fleet operates in a legal loophole: rejects conventional insurance, uses complex corporate structures and changes names to hide the ownership and final destination of the crude oil.
The attack on Kairos and Virat not only damages two vessels, but also sends a message to shipowners and insurers who benefit from this “parallel business” of Russian oil: the risk is no longer just sanctioning or reputational, but physical.
And it confirms that the Black Sea, which has become the main corridor of that fleet, is also a battlefield in which drones can turn any route into an objective.
Almost in parallel, an attack with marine drone reached a mooring point in the Russian port of Novorossiysk, forcing the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC), which moves more than 1% of the world’s oil, to temporarily halt operations.
Novorossiysk had already been the target of other Ukrainian attacks, but this episode underlines that kyiv is targeting not only ships, but export nodes that connect Central Asia’s oil fields to the global market.
This new chapter in the Black Sea comes while Donald Trump He tries to present himself as a mediator in a peace agreement. The drafts circulating speak of territorial concessions in Donetsk and long-term security guarantees, but also of a stubborn reality: Russia finances its offensive with the constant flow of petrodollars, and Ukraine tries to cut off that flow with surgical operations such as naval drones.