Kiper said the ships were sailing under the flags of Barbados and Panama. He said waves of strikes also hit southern parts of Odesa Oblast, damaging civilian sites and energy infrastructure.
“Fortunately, there are no casualties from these attacks,” Kiper wrote in a Telegram post.
Earlier, Ukrainian Navy spokesman Dmytro Pletenchuk said Russian forces on the night of May 17–18 attacked a Chinese merchant vessel in Ukrainian territorial waters with a Shahed loitering munition. Pletenchuk called the incident “a terrible mistake” and asked whether it was intentional.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy later said the Russian
attackers knew the vessel belonged to China. “There were drone strikes in
Odesa, and one of the unmanned aerial vehicles struck a ship that belongs to
China. The Russians could not have not known which ship it was,” he said.