Ukraine war briefing: Zelenskyy blames Russia for attack on Bulgarian vessels in Black Sea as investigation launched

Bulgaria’s prime minister said that two commercial vessels were struck by drones on Tuesday in the first attack on shipping in the Nato member’s exclusive economic zone in the Black Sea. Bulgarian authorities said the origin of the drones was under investigation, but Ukraine’s prime minister, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, blamed Russia for the drone strikes. “This is an unacceptable attack in Bulgaria’s exclusive economic zone. It is a blatant violation of international law and maritime law,” Rumen Radev said.

Explosions rang out in Kyiv on Wednesday, news agencies reported, after the military warned a ballistic missile was heading toward the Ukrainian capital. Zelenskyy warned in his nightly address on Tuesday that Russia was planning a “massive strike”. “Ukrainian services and ​our air force ‌are ready ‌to respond to the extent permitted by ‌our available means of defence,” he said.

Ukraine struck an oil tanker off the southern Russian coast on Tuesday evening, Russia’s transport ministry said. The ministry said the Liberian-flagged tanker had been attacked by “naval drones” and that “crude oil was burning openly in the waters of the Black Sea”, triggering a huge fire and black smoke cloud that blanketed parts of the resort city of Sochi.

Russian air defenses intercepted nearly 900 Ukrainian drones overnight on Monday into Tuesday over multiple regions of the country, as well as the occupied Crimean Peninsula and the Sea of Azov, Russia’s defence ministry said Tuesday. Unconfirmed media reports said a major fuel depot in the Moscow region was on fire after the attack that killed two people.

A Ukrainian drone attack on a minibus in the Russian-occupied part of the Ukrainian Zaporizhzhia region killed three people on Tuesday, Moscow-installed authorities said. Kremlin-appointed official Yevgeny Balitsky said on Telegram that a Ukrainian drone hit the bus near a frontline village, killing “three people, including the driver” and wounding “three passengers with various degrees of severity”.

The ⁠Kremlin dismissed on Tuesday comments ⁠by ⁠Germany’s head ​of foreign intelligence about Berlin ⁠being at risk of ⁠entering a violent ​conflict ‌with ‌Russia, describing them as ‌baseless and a ploy to justify defence spending. On Monday, intelligence ‌chief Martin Jaeger said the ​risk of a direct conflict was rising ⁠and accused Russia ​of stepping ​up an ​increasingly aggressive “shadow ​war” ‌against European democracies.

EU envoys are ⁠expected to approve about 1,650 new designations on Wednesday under ⁠the bloc’s sanctions ⁠regime ​for Russia, with the majority focused on the country’s military ⁠industrial complex, EU diplomats said on Tuesday. The package, proposed by the EU’s ⁠foreign policy arm, will be ​the single largest ‌set of ‌designations since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine ‌in 2022.

Ukraine on Tuesday said oil supplies to Russia through South Korea helped Moscow offset losses in refining capacity caused by recent strikes on its fuel facilities. The Guardian reported that 176,000 tonnes of oil products were shipped through South Korea in July and August, citing port records and ship-tracking data. Zelenskyy’s adviser on sanctions, Vladyslav Vlasiuk, said the shipments were “in sharp contrast” to South Korea’s sanctions policy.

Ukraine’s national grid operator has ordered rolling blackouts in the capital Kyiv, the country’s largest private energy provider said Tuesday, after Russian attacks on energy infrastructure. The power outages were to begin at 3pm local time (1200 GMT) and last until the end of the day, the provider said in a statement.