3 Seafarers Killed As Russian Strike Hits Fertiliser Ship At Port Of Odesa

On July 13, a Russian strike hit a civilian cargo ship flying the flag of Togo unloading mineral fertiliser at the port of Odesa, killing five and injuring ten. Oleh Kiper, governor of Odesa Oblast, said the death toll had increased after rescuers found two more bodies while extinguishing the fire on board.

The strike hit directly the superstructure of the vessel, Oleksii Kuleba, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister for restoration, said. The impact was powerful enough to start a fire that took hours for emergency crews to control. Three of the five killed were foreign crew members. The sailors injured have been hospitalised and are still undergoing medical treatment.

Kuleba called the strike another Russian attack on civilian shipping and port infrastructure in Ukraine. He warned that such attacks threaten international navigation, undermine the stability of global trade and put the world’s food security at risk.

The ship was hit in a wider Russian assault across Ukraine overnight. Regional authorities said at least 57 people were injured across the country, including a five-year-old child injured in Odesa Oblast. Local officials said the attack damaged a municipal bus depot and a sanatorium and several residential buildings in Odesa itself.

The port of Odesa has been attacked many times since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. The attacks have continued even after a maritime export corridor was reopened to allow Ukraine to resume grain shipments through the Black Sea. Ukrainian officials have long warned that attacks on commercial vessels and port facilities put foreign crews and cargo at risk, regardless of the vessel’s flag state.

The attack came amid a period of heightened maritime activity on both sides of the war. Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces have announced an ongoing campaign against Russia’s so-called shadow fleet in the Sea of Azov, saying they have struck 105 vessels in the past eight days, including tankers, dry cargo ships, ferries and tugboats.

The Sea of Azov campaign, Kyiv has said, is aimed at cutting off fuel and logistics support to occupied Crimea and choking funding for Russia’s war effort. Moscow has not officially connected the strike at the port of Odesa to the Azov campaign, and no source has confirmed any direct causal link between the two. The owner of the Togo-flagged vessel and the cargo’s destination have not been disclosed.

The Odesa strike is the latest in a growing list of civilian maritime casualties in the Black Sea region this year, as the two militaries increasingly draw commercial shipping into the conflict.