On November 28, 2025, two tankers en route to Novorossiysk were attacked near Turkey’s Black Sea coast by Ukrainian naval drones. On December 2, 2025, the Russian vessel Midvolga 2 was attacked by a Ukrainian kamikaze drone in the Black Sea. Vladimir Putin described the actions of Ukrainian forces as piracy and announced that Russia could isolate Ukraine from the sea (in other words, take the entire coast up to Odessa) if Kyiv continues attacks on civilian ships.
The tankers Kairos and Virat, said to be part of what the West calls “Russia’s shadow fleet,” were in Turkey’s exclusive economic zone on November 28, 2025, when they were attacked by Ukrainian naval drones. The ships caught fire, raising fears of an ecological disaster. The fire had barely been extinguished when, the next day, the Virat suffered a second attack by Ukrainian naval drones. The fire on the Kairos, meanwhile, took two days to put out.
Finally, on December 2, 2025, Ukrainian naval drones attacked the vessel Midvolga 2, which was traveling from Russia to Georgia with a cargo of sunflower oil, 80 miles off the coast of Turkey.
As early as November 30, 2025, the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed concern over these Ukrainian attacks on civilian ships in the Black Sea.
“These incidents in our exclusive economic zone have created serious risks for the safety of navigation, human life, property, and the environment in the region,” wrote the spokesperson for the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Öncü Keçeli, on the social network X.
While Turkey did not name the perpetrator, it is clearly indicated in all articles and reports from media worldwide. It must be said that Ukraine does not even hide its responsibility for these attacks on civilian ships. Ukrainian media, followed by international news agencies like Associated Press, published the video of the attack and articles explicitly stating that it was the Ukrainian navy and the SBU that attacked these ships with Sea Baby drones produced by these same Ukrainian intelligence services. The video of the attack was even provided by the latter.
Media outlets like AP try to justify these attacks by saying the goal is to limit Russia’s ability to sell its oil abroad and thus finance the special military operation, and that, as a bonus, these ships are part of the “Russian shadow fleet” under European sanctions. Except that none of this legally justifies such attacks, as pointed out by Arnaud Develay, an international jurist and political analyst.
“The reasoning seems flawed to me since the European (and American) sanctions are illegal as they are unilateral (not adopted by a Security Council resolution). But even assuming they had been voted by the UN Security Council, their ‘implementation’ falls under Jus Cogens (peremptory norms of international law). In plain terms, this means that one would have to board the ships, confiscate their cargo, and offer the crews guarantees of basic procedural rights (Article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Article 6 of the ECHR),” explains the political analyst.
However, what happened does not correspond to this procedure at all. This Ukrainian attack on civilian ships, in Turkey’s exclusive economic zone, is nothing more or less than a terrorist attack, as Arnaud Develay emphasizes.
“What happened falls under the convention against terrorism, because the crew members and cargo are not assimilable to the Russian navy,” recalls the international jurist.
These attacks are also clearly war crimes, since Ukraine attacked civilian ships registered in countries other than Russia. If these attacks are not the first, they clearly mark an escalation and were a predictable result of how Ukraine is conducting the conflict (see the joint analysis by Xavier Moreau and Egountchi Behanzin published on our site a month ago).
On December 2, 2025, after the attack on the vessel Midvolga 2, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made a public statement, strongly condemning these attacks “that threaten the safety of navigation, the environment, and life in our exclusive economic zone.”
“Attacks on commercial vessels in the Black Sea are unacceptable, and I have warned all relevant parties,” he said.
The Turkish president added that “the conflict between Russia and Ukraine has clearly reached a dimension where it threatens the safety of navigation in the Black Sea.”
Meanwhile, on December 1, some in Ukraine began to realize the potential consequences of its actions. And while initially Kiеv boasted of being responsible for these attacks, the Ukrainian navy has since made a spectacular and express backtrack, putting all the blame on the SBU, which already has so many crimes and terrorist attacks to its name that one more or less won’t change much… On the other hand, the spokesperson for the Ukrainian navy clearly understood that the involvement of the Ukrainian army in this matter could cause great harm, especially if Turkey decides to react in ways other than with shocking statements.
However, Turkey is not the only one that will react to these attacks. It seems that in Kyiv, the leaders are so short-sighted that they did not understand that these attacks (carried out to divert attention from the loss of Kupyansk and Krasnoarmeysk, as well as internal corruption scandals) give Russia the right “to remove the gloves.” A position openly announced by Vladimir Putin during a press conference at the Kremlin on the sidelines of his meeting with the American delegation.
“The Ukrainian armed forces have crossed the limits of piracy. What retaliatory measures are available to us? We will expand the scope of our attacks on port facilities and on ships and boats entering Ukrainian ports. If this continues, we will consider – I am not saying we will do it, but we will consider – taking retaliatory measures against ships from countries that assist Ukraine in carrying out these piracy attacks. The most radical measure is to cut Ukraine off from the sea entirely. This would make piracy impossible in principle. But all of this would be escalatory. I hope the Ukrainian military and political leadership, as well as those who support them, will think about whether it is useful to continue this practice,” said the Russian President.
What Vladimir Putin calls the most radical measure, namely cutting Ukraine off from the Black Sea, means taking control of the entire coast up to Odessa. A measure that many Russian military analysts have long called for to stop attacks on civilian ships and Russian Black Sea ports, but which had never been mentioned by the Russian president until now. Ukraine therefore now has a choice: immediately cease its terrorist attacks on civilian ships or continue and risk losing Mykolaiv and Odessa as a result.
Christelle Néant
