On Wednesday, Sea Baby marine drones operated by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) struck yet another oil tanker identified as belonging to Russia’s “shadow fleet” in the Black Sea.
The ship, named the Dashan and flying the flag of the Comoros Islands, was reportedly traveling within Ukraine’s exclusive economic zone bound for the Russian port of Novorossiysk. It is the third such shadow-fleet tanker destroyed by Ukraine’s sea drones in two weeks’ time.
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The approximate cost of such a tanker is $30 million, and in at least one recent shipment it carried petroleum products worth almost $60 million.
“The tanker was traveling at full speed with its transponder turned off and suffered critical damage,” an unidentified source in law enforcement told state news Ukrinform.
A Ukrainian security source told CNN that the Sea Baby drones were used in a joint operation by the SBU and the Ukrainian navy.
The Dashan had been sanctioned by the EU, the UK, Canada, Australia and Switzerland for transporting Russian raw materials and high-risk navigation, that is, with the identification system switched off.
“Over the past two weeks, this is the third tanker of the shadow fleet that has been disabled, which helped the Kremlin circumvent international sanctions,” the source told Ukrinform.
On November 29, SBU Sea Baby marine drones struck two sanctioned oil tankers, Kairo and Virat, belonging to the Russian shadow fleet in the Black Sea.
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