Russia Sunday accused Ukrainian forces of attacking – albeit unsuccessfully – one of its naval ships with six high-speed drone boats as the vessel patrolled major natural gas pipelines in the Black Sea.
The claim comes just weeks after Moscow said another Russian warship, Ivan Hurs, had been attacked unsuccessfully by Ukrainian uncrewed speedboats in the Black Sea, on the approaches to the Bosporus.
The warship had been protecting the TurkStream and Blue Stream gas pipelines – which carry gas from Russia to Türkiye, partly across the Black Sea.
"Ukraine's armed forces made an unsuccessful attempt to attack the Black Sea Fleet's Priazovye ship," Russia’s Defense Ministry said Sunday.
The Priazovye reconnaissance vessel was carrying out "monitoring of the situation and ensuring security along the routes of the TurkStream and Blue Stream gas pipelines in the southeastern part of the Black Sea," the ministry said.
Ukraine attacked in the early hours of Sunday about 300 kilometers (186.41 miles) southeast of Sevastopol, the headquarters of Russia's Black Sea fleet on the Russian-annexed Crimean peninsula, the ministry said.
The Russian military destroyed all the speedboats, and the ship didn’t sustain any damage, the ministry said. The claim could not be independently verified, and Ukrainian officials made no immediate comment.
A remotely piloted U.S. military aircraft called the RQ-4 Global Hawk was conducting reconnaissance in the Black Sea at the time of the attack, Moscow said.
"The Black Sea Fleet ship 'Priazovye' continues to carry out its assigned tasks," the Russian Defense Ministry said.
Unexplained explosions last September ruptured the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines bringing gas from Russia under the Baltic Sea to Germany.
After losing the use of its Baltic Sea pipelines, Russia is keen that Türkiye should become even more of a hub for Russian energy exports.
TurkStream carries gas westward from Russia's Taman peninsula across the width of the Black Sea to a point west of the Bosporus on the coast of European Türkiye.
The pipeline was formally launched with a capacity of 31.5 billion cubic meters per year in January 2020. The pipeline, which allows Moscow to bypass Ukraine as a transit route to Europe, carries Russian gas to southern Europe through Türkiye.
Blue Stream, however, crosses the eastern Black Sea from north to south, making landfall in the Turkish port of Samsun, around 700 kilometers east of the Bosporus by sea.
Meanwhile, Russian gas producer Gazprom on Monday said a week of maintenance work on the TurkStream pipeline had ended as scheduled.
Gas flows in the pipeline had been switched off on June 5.
