Turkey on Tuesday said a tanker reported coming under attack in the Black Sea on its way from Russia to Georgia, days after two other vessels were hit off the Turkish coast.
A Ukrainian security source told Agence France-Presse their forces had carried out the earlier attacks, with drones targeting vessels that were “covertly transporting Russian oil.”
Turkey’s maritime affairs directorate wrote on X that the latest incident was communicated on Tuesday morning by the Midvolga 2, which “reported that it was attacked 80 nautical miles off our coast.”
🚨MIDVOLGA-2 tankeri, Rusya'dan Gürcistan’a ayçiçek yağı yüklü olarak seyrederken kıyılarımızdan 80 mil açıkta saldırıya uğradığını bildirmiştir. Halihazırda 13 personelinde olumsuz durum olmayan geminin yardım talebi yoktur. Gemi, makineleri ile Sinop’a doğru seyir etmektedir. pic.twitter.com/Ov9tEeswEk
— DENİZCİLİK GENEL MÜDÜRLÜĞÜ (@denizcilikgm) December 2, 2025
It was “sailing from Russia to Georgia loaded with sunflower oil.”
“The ship, which currently has no adverse conditions among its 13 personnel, has no request for assistance,” it said.
The vessel was heading towards the port of Sinop in the central area of Turkey’s Black Sea coast, which stretches some 1,600 kilometers along the southern flank of the sea.
⚡️Photos from the Russian tanker MIDVOLGA-2, which was hit by a drone this morning near the Turkish coast
Preliminary reports suggest the strike was carried out by a fixed-wing drone, likely an FP-1. https://t.co/2k8jTmWGPR pic.twitter.com/bkhdVO7TWh
— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) December 2, 2025
The maritime website VesselFinder lists the Midvolga 2 as an “oil/chemical tanker.”
It did not give an updated position for the vessel, whose location was last listed on November 21 when it was said to be travelling from the Turkish port of Samsun to Russia’s Rostov-on-Don.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said the drone attacks on Friday were a “worrying escalation.”
“We cannot under any circumstances accept these attacks, which threaten the safety of navigation, the environment and lives in our exclusive economic zone,” he said on Monday evening.
“The conflict between Russia and Ukraine has clearly reached a stage where it threatens the safety of navigation in the Black Sea.”
The two empty oil tankers, the Virat and the Kairos, both reported explosions on Friday but there were no injuries reported.
The Kairos was struck around 1500 GMT en route to the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, with rescuers evacuating its 25 crew after a fire broke out, Turkish officials said.
At the time, it was about 100 kilometers (60 miles) east of the point where the Bosphorus Strait enters the Black Sea.
The Virat was struck later. At the time, it was about 400 kilometers further east, according to the VesselFinder tracking site, and it reported a second explosion in the early hours of Saturday morning but none of its 20 crew members were hurt.
Turkey’s transport ministry blamed drones for both attacks on the Virat.
Both tankers — which were flying a Gambian flag, according to VesselFinder — are subject to Western sanctions for transporting oil from Russian ports in defiance of an embargo imposed after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
© Agence France-Presse