Turkey’s foreign minister on Saturday called for a “moratorium” on attacks by Russia and Ukraine in the Black Sea after a series of strikes on civilian ships there. “The conflict has spread across the whole Black Sea,” Hakan Fidan said in an interview with Turkey’s state news agency Anadolu. “To begin with, they targeted the ports and the military ships. Now, they are attacking all commercial shipping without distinction,” he added. Ships belonging to Turkey or flying the Turkish flag were among those targeted, he said.
Russia has continued striking Ukrainian port infrastructure and vessels supporting the Ukrainian military, Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Saturday. The ministry said Russian forces hit military warehouses containing communications and electronic warfare equipment in the Black Sea port of Odesa. In the port of Mykolaiv, Russian forces struck a cargo vessel carrying military equipment and a warehouse storing weapons and military supplies, the ministry said. It added that another dry cargo vessel transporting military supplies for Ukraine’s armed forces was hit in the Black Sea.
Ukraine on Saturday denied targeting Bulgaria after a drone exploded close to the strategic Trans-Balkan gas pipeline linking Turkey to Ukraine near the Romanian border. There were no casualties or damage. Bulgaria’s defence ministry said the drone was of a type “widely used by the Ukrainian military”, and the foreign minister summoned the Ukrainian ambassador for a meeting on Monday in response, her office told AFP. Kyiv said it was “in close contact with the Bulgarian side to clarify the circumstances” of the incident, the latest case of a drone straying into Nato airspace as Ukraine fights off Russia’s invasion. “We can say with certainty that the Ukrainian Armed Forces did not intentionally direct any assets toward Bulgaria,” Ukraine’s foreign ministry spokesperson Georgiy Tykhyi said, blaming Russia’s invasion for the incident.
