Russia-Ukraine war live: chemical tanker hit near Crimea as UK reports ‘significant blow’ to Russian fleet | Ukraine

Ukraine has unofficially taken responsibility for the drone strike on a Russian tanker in the Kerch Strait.

An anonymous security service source told Agence France-Presse: “Overnight the [Ukrainian security service] SBU blew up the Sig, a large oil tanker of the Russian Federation that was transporting fuel for Russian troops.

It said the operation, which involved a naval drone and explosives, was carried out jointly with the Ukrainian navy in the country’s territorial waters.

The source described the targeted vessel as “one of the most powerful oil tankers of the Russian Federation”. “It was well-loaded with fuel, so the ‘fireworks’ could be seen from afar,” they said.

Russian authorities said the Sig had been hit late last night local time south of the Kerch Strait. The oil and chemical tanker is under US sanctions for supplying jet fuel to Russian forces in Syria supporting the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad.

Russia’s state RIA Novosti news agency said there had been no casualties in the attack, citing the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre of Novorossiysk.

The Ukrainian sea drone strike on the Russian navy landing ship Olenegorsky Gornyak in the port of Novorossiysk is a “significant blow” to Moscow’s Black Sea fleet, the UK Ministry of Defence has said.

In its latest intelligence briefing, the MoD said the ship “almost certainly suffered serious damage” during the attack and “represents the largest Russian naval vessel seriously damaged or destroyed since the sinking of the cruiser Moskva on 13 April 2022”.

An “extremely fierce battle is going on” in the long-contested eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, the deputy defence minister, Hanna Maliar, has said, with Ukrainian forces advancing “slowly but confidently” south of the city while securing control of positions north of it.

“The Russians are throwing huge numbers of forces into the Bakhmut area,” she said on national TV. “It has been important for us to establish ourselves on dominant heights in these areas.”

Russia’s defence ministry said its forces had made air and artillery strikes on the key village of Klishchiivka south of Bakhmut and surrounding towns, knocking out Ukrainian vehicles and equipment.

Accounts from Moscow said Russian troops had repelled eight Ukrainian attempts to advance in the east and inflicted a defeat near Bakhmut.

Kyiv is determined to recapture land around Bakhmut, seized by Russian forces in May after months of battles.

Writing on the Telegram messaging app, Maliar added: “The enemy is desperately trying to stop our offensive.”

Ukrainian forces, she said, were also working to contain intensified Russian attacks on areas farther north in the Donetsk region, around Kupiansk and Lyman.

Talks to find a peaceful settlement to end Russia’s war in Ukraine starting in Saudi Arabia this weekend will be difficult, but Kyiv is counting persuading more countries to back its peace formula, the head of Ukraine’s delegation has said.

Ukraine and its allies hope the meeting in Jeddah of national security advisers and other senior officials from about 40 countries – but not Russia – will agree on key principles on how to end the war.

“I expect that the conversation will be difficult, but behind us is truth, behind us – goodness,” Andriy Yermak, the head of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s office and his key envoy for the talks, said late on Friday in a television interview published on his Telegram account.

The forum excludes Russia, but the Kremlin said it will “keep an eye” on the meeting. China, which has firm ties with Russia, said on Friday it will send the special envoy for Eurasian affairs, Li Hui, for the talks.

“We have many disagreements and we have heard different positions, but it is important that our principles are shared,” he said.

Ukrainian, Russian and international officials say there is no prospect of direct peace talks between Ukraine and Russia at the moment, as the war continues to rage and Kyiv seeks to reclaim territory through a counter-offensive.

But Ukraine aims first to build a bigger coalition of diplomatic support beyond its core western backers by reaching out to global south countries such as India, Brazil and South Africa, many of which have remained publicly neutral.

Zelenskiy said he hoped the initiative will lead to a “peace summit” of world leaders this autumn to endorse the principles, based on his own 10-point formula for a settlement. Moscow has rejected Zelenskiy’s peace formula.

A Russian tanker was hit by Ukrainian drones in the Kerch Strait, Russian officials have said.

“The SIG tanker … received a hole in the engine room near the waterline on the starboard side, preliminarily as a result of a sea drone attack,” Russia’s Federal Agency for Marine and River Transport said early on Saturday, adding that there were no casualties.

The reported attack briefly halted traffic on the Kerch Bridge, the strategic highway linking occupied Crimea to the Russian mainland.

Explosions were heard near the bridge early on Saturday, Russian-appointed officials said, adding that the blasts were linked to the attack on the tanker. No fuel had been spilled from the ship, which had 11 people on board, Tass said.

Ukraine, which rarely comments on attacks on Russian targets, made no official statement on the incident.

Vladimir Rogov, a Russian-installed official in the southern Ukrainian region of Zaporizhzhia, said several members of the ship’s crew were injured by broken glass in the attack.

“The detonation due to the explosion on the ship was visible from the peninsula, which the local residents thought was an explosion in the vicinity of Yakovenkovo settlement not far from the Crimean Bridge,” Rogov wrote on Telegram.

Traffic on the Kerch Bridge was halted for about three hours and resumed early on Saturday, according to the highways information centre’s Telegram channel.

Read more on this story here:

Welcome back to our live coverage of the war in Ukraine. This is Mark Gerts with the latest. Our top stories this morning:

A Russian tanker was hit by Ukrainian drones in the Kerch Strait, according to Russian officials. The attack briefly halted traffic on the Kerch Bridge, which links Russian-occupied Crimea to the Russian mainland.

The Moscow Times identified the vessel as the chemical tanker SIG, which is under US sanctions for supplying jet fuel to Russian forces in Syria.

Meanwhile, the head of Ukraine’s delegation has said talks to find a peaceful settlement to end the war starting in Saudi Arabia this weekend will be difficult.

Ukraine and its allies hope the meeting in Jeddah of national security advisers and other senior officials from about 40 countries – but not Russia – will agree on key principles on how to end the war.

We’ll have more on these stories shortly. Elsewhere:

• A Russian landing ship was struck and disabled in the country’s Black Sea port of Novorossiysk by an unmanned Ukrainian boat, known as a sea drone, Kyiv said. The 112-metre Olenegorsky Gornyak from Russia’s Northern Fleet, which has been used to transport troops and military hardware into occupied Ukrainian ports, was said to have been sufficiently damaged to have been put out of combat action.

• Onboard camera footage appeared to confirm the success of the night attack on the ship. Images of a Russian warship tilting to its side emerged shortly after the strike and footage was published by the Unian news agency from the head of the marine drone appearing to show it moving stealthily across the Black Sea towards the ship and hitting it at its centre. Satellite imagery also appeared to show a Russian landing ship leaking oil while docked at a Black Sea port.

• US bank JP Morgan this week stopped processing payments for the Russian Agricultural Bank, Russia said on Friday. JP Morgan had handled some Russian grain export payments for the past few months with reassurances from Washington. However, that cooperation stopped this week, Russia’s foreign ministry said on Friday. “The direct channel between the Russian Agricultural Bank and JP Morgan … was closed on 2 August,” foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova was quoted by Russian media as saying.

• Russia’s defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, visited a combat zone in Ukraine to inspect a command post and meet senior military officers, the army said on Friday. Shoigu got an update on the situation on the front and “thanked commanders and soldiers … for successful offensive operations” in Lyman in eastern Ukraine, it said, without mentioning when the visit took place.

• At the Russia-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine, the UN nuclear watchdog said it had “finally” been granted access requested a month ago and that it had found no explosives after claims of mines being planted around the infrastructure.

• A court in Russia has extended Alexei Navalny’s prison sentence by 19 years and sentenced him to a special regime with the harshest prison conditions in the country. Navalny was found guilty on six counts, including inciting and financing extremism, creating an illegal NGO, the rehabilitation of nazism and inciting children to dangerous acts. He and his supporters have rejected the charges as being politically motivated.

• An associate of Navalny who worked for his YouTube channel also stood trial in a Moscow court on Friday. Daniel Kholodny, a TV technician, was found guilty of organising an extremist group and sentenced to eight years in prison, Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported.

• Diplomatic tension between Poland and Belarus escalated as Warsaw claimed that two Belarusian helicopters had violated its international airspace on Tuesday. Ukraine’s SBU security service also accused Russia of preparing to stage a “false flag” attack at the Mozyr oil refinery in Belarus in order to draw Belarus into the war in Ukraine.

• Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie visited Ukraine on Friday and met with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in an attempt to underscore US support for Kyiv by one of the people bidding to be the next Republican president of the US.

• Soprano Anna Netrebko, once among the Metropolitan Opera’s biggest box office draws, has sued the New York opera company and general manager Peter Gelb, alleging defamation, breach of contract and other violations related to the institution’s decision to drop her following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.