Cargo ferry sinks in Russian port after Ukrainian aerial attack

MOSCOW — Ukraine sank a Russian ferry carrying fuel tanks in an aerial attack on a southern Russian port on Thursday, Russian officials said.

"As a result of the damage, the ferry sank in the waters of the Kavkaz port," in Russia's southern Krasnodar region, just across from the annexed Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, the region's operational headquarters said in a statement on Telegram.

It had earlier reported that "a railroad ferry with fuel tanks in the Kavkaz port was attacked" and that emergency services had been dispatched. 

Images on social media had earlier shown a fire and plume of smoke after Russian officials reported a Ukrainian attack on the port.

The Kavkaz port sits in the Kerch Strait that separates Russia from Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula it annexed in 2014.

Ukrainian aerial attacks have targeted Crimea and the road and rail bridge connecting it to the Russian mainland throughout the conflict.

Officials in Kyiv posted cryptic comments after the attack.

"Beautiful," Daria Zarivna, a communications advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said in a post on Telegram, attaching a photo of a large fire at the port.

Speaking at an event for army veterans earlier on Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appeared to call for his troops to step up attacks on Russian territory.

"In order to throw the occupier out of our land, we have to create as many problems as possible for the Russian state on its territory," he said.

Russian officials did not say what weapon Ukraine used to strike the ship.

The Russian state-run news agency RIA Novosti said five people on the vessel at the time of the attack were unaccounted for.

Ukraine has hit multiple Russian vessels around the Black Sea throughout the 2.5-year conflict.

A spate of attacks earlier in the fighting caused Russia to relocate its Black Sea Fleet from its historic base at Sevastopol, on the southern coast of Crimea, further east to Novorossiisk, on the Russian mainland.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday accused Ukraine of trying to attack the Kursk nuclear power station, around 50 kilometres from the fighting in the Russian border region.

"The enemy tried to strike the nuclear power plant at night, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been informed," Putin said in a televised government meeting.

IAEA chief Rafael Grossi is planning to visit the Kursk nuclear plant next week, an agency spokesperson told AFP earlier on Thursday.

Kyiv and Moscow have traded accusations of threatening nuclear safety throughout the 2.5-year conflict.

Russian troops seized the abandoned Chernobyl power plant in northern Ukraine and the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant -- Europe's largest -- in the first days of its full-scale military operations.

Moscow, in turn, claims Ukrainian forces have tried to strike the plant on multiple occasions in drone attacks.

After Ukraine launched its armed incursion into the Kursk region, the IAEA urged both Russia and Ukraine to exercise "maximum restraint" to "avoid a nuclear accident with the potential for serious radiological consequences".

UN nuclear agency head Rafael Grossi said he was "personally in contact with the relevant authorities of both countries" and would "continue to update the international community as appropriate". 

The power plant has six units -- two are in shutdown, two are fully operational and two are under construction, according to the IAEA.

Counter-attack 

Russia's army on Thursday said it had captured another village in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, the latest in a string of territorial advances for Moscow's troops. 

The defence ministry in Moscow said its forces had captured the village of Mezhove, located between Avdiivka, captured in February, and the logistics hub of Pokrovsk, toward which Russian troops are advancing. 

Moscow has pushed on with its offensive in the Donetsk region even as it tries to fight off a Ukrainian counter-assault into its own Kursk border region. 

Facing manpower and ammunition shortages for much of 2024, Ukraine has been pushed onto the back foot in the industrial eastern region following months of stalemate. 

Russia's defence ministry has claimed to capture new settlements in the area on an almost daily basis in recent weeks. 

They include towns such as New York, which have been the focus of heavy fighting and artillery raids for months, as well as tiny villages, consisting of little more than a single street and a handful of abandoned buildings. 

Ukraine is evacuating civilians from the city of Pokrovsk and its surrounding areas, about 10 kilometres from the fighting, where officials say some 50,000 still live.