Athens/Kiev, Dec. 28, (dpa/GNA) – Ukraine’s military said on Thursday a Greek freighter travelling in the Black Sea on its way to a Ukrainian Danube port was hit by a Russian mine, but the operator stressed it was still unclear what had caused the blast near the ship.
“We still don’t know what happened exactly, but the captain has informed us that there has been an explosion,” a representative for Athens-based NAVA Shipping said. According to the company, no one was seriously injured.
The Ukrainian Operational Command South, however, blamed the blast on an “enemy sea mine.” A fire broke out on board the freighter but has since been extinguished, it said on a post on Telegram.
The Maritime Bulletin, a maritime news website run by Russian journalist Mikhail Voytenko, also reported that a “Russian sea mine exploded under or near the stern of Greek general cargo ship VYSSOS off Bystre Mouth of Danube Delta” on Wednesday.
The freighter, sailing under the Panamanian flag, was headed to the Ukrainian Danube port of Izmail for a grain shipment, according to the report.
“The blast was so tremendous that the ship’s stern was lifted off water, the ship suffered [a] blackout with all machinery going off,” it said.
The captain then managed to prevent the ship from sinking by deliberately grounding the heavily damaged vessel, according to the report.
A total of 18 crew members, most of them Egyptian nationals, are said to have been on board.
To minimize the risk of a Russian attack from the Black Sea, Ukraine began mining parts of its coast briefly after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of the neighbouring country in February 2022.
When the Kakhovka Dam in southern Ukraine was destroyed in June this year, resulting in a flood disaster that claimed the lives of hundreds of civilians, a number of landmines were washed into the sea.
However, Kiev also accuses the Russian Black Sea Fleet of using mines to disrupt maritime trade in the area.
Amid its war on Ukraine, Russia also mounted a naval blockade of the country’s Black Sea ports, hampering the export of Ukrainian grain.
Ukraine, a major global grain supplier, began to reroute exports via its Danube ports of Reni and Izmail and the Romanian Danube delta.