Ukraine's drones widened their assault on Russia's sanctions-dodging shadow fleet overnight on 17 July, hitting 12 more vessels in the Black Sea, according to Unmanned Systems Forces commander Robert "Madyar" Brovdi. The same night, drones struck occupied Kerch and Berdiansk, and satellites logged fires at Crimea's main rail hub as the campaign to cut the peninsula off from Russia pressed on.

Twelve more ships in a single night

Brovdi said his operators hit nine dry-cargo ships, one tanker, one gas carrier, and one tug in the Black Sea. The strikes ran under the codename MoLoChKa, a Ukrainian term for dairy products.

He put the 6–17 July total at 159 vessels of Russia's shadow fleet across both seas. Of those, 117 were hit in the Sea of Azov and 42 in the Black Sea.

Brovdi vowed the operation would run without end. Moscow will fall, he wrote, promising Ukraine would "feed and rebuild" Crimea once the peninsula is retaken.

A day earlier, the Security Service of Ukraine's Mamai sea drones struck two shadow-fleet crude tankers in the same waters. The wider drive has already pushed the fight out of the Azov shallows and into the open Black Sea. 

Isolation of Crimea continues

While the ships burned at sea, drones hit occupied Crimea from about 21:40 until morning, the monitoring Telegram channel Krymsky Veter reported. Residents heard explosions in at least Kerch, Simferopol, Feodosia, and Yevpatoria.

By morning, OSINT channels recorded a cluster of fires at Kerch's railway station, near the Crimean Bridge, and NASA FIRMS satellite data confirmed a blaze in the area, the monitoring channel Exilenova+ said. Early reports pointed to burning warehouses, rail wagons on the tracks, and possibly the Kerch oil depot and the Kerchenska electrical substation, though none of that was confirmed.

Monitoring channels also logged a fire near Shchebetivka, by the Koktebel substation, after drones reportedly struck a pumping station and the 110/35/6 kV facility there.

Crimea's supply lines under strain

The Kerch rail yard has grown critically overloaded as Ukrainian strikes hammer the peninsula's rail network. Two days earlier, occupation authorities in the northern city of Dzhankoi restricted mobile service to 16 hours a day amid power disruptions.

In occupied Berdiansk, Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Ukrainian strike drones hit energy infrastructure, sparking a fire, Exilenova+ said in a separate overnight report, sharing a video of the resulting fire.

The sea and rail strikes fit a longer effort to sever Crimea by cutting the fuel, transport, and energy links that sustain the occupation. 

Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) struck two sanctioned Russian oil tankers with naval drones in the Black Sea, the SBU said. The vessels belong to the shadow fleet Moscow uses to sell crude around Western sanctions, and Russian aircraft tried and failed to stop the attack.

Two tankers, one sanctions-busting job

The SBU, working with the Navy, hit the ocean-going tankers Louise 1 and Banda — both under Ukrainian sanctions — with Mamai naval drones. 

Louise 1 had moved Russian crude through the G7 and EU embargo, loading at Baltic and Black Sea ports with its transponder switched off. In 2026 alone, it carried nearly 3 million tons of Russian Urals crude, the SBU said.

Banda had run Russian crude out of four ports: Ust-Luga, Kerch, Novorossiysk, and Nakhodka.

As the drones closed in, Russian aircraft fired machine guns and dropped bombs at them, without success, the SBU said. 

The service calls each shadow-fleet tanker a legitimate target and a working part of Russia's war machine. Every strike, it says, cuts the oil money paying for the invasion.

A week earlier, the SBU's Sea Baby drone hit the sanctioned tanker Blue in Ukraine's waters off occupied Yalta. Ukraine has spent 2026 turning cheap drones into kinetic sanctions on Russia's tanker fleet. Sea Baby drones have wrecked shadow-fleet tankers across the Black Sea since late 2025.

The air campaign running alongside it

The naval strikes run in parallel with an aerial-drone campaign by the Unmanned Systems Forces (SBS). On 16 July, SBS operators struck 11 more shadow-fleet vessels — five oil tankers, a gas carrier, three dry-cargo ships, and two tugs.

That brought the 6–16 July total to 147 vessels: 117 in the Sea of Azov and 30 in the Black Sea.

"The goal: paralysis of the logistics of oil, fuel, and cargo that bypasses sanctions," commander Robert "Madyar" Brovdi wrote. 

Ukraine's aerial attack drones opened a new front against Russia's sanctions-dodging shadow fleet, striking 20 vessels in the Black Sea in a single night, the Unmanned Systems Forces (SBS) reported. The raid launched the Black Sea phase of a campaign that had until now played out in the Sea of Azov, and it pushed the 10-day tally well past a hundred ships.

The Black Sea cluster opens

Overnight on 15 July, SBS operators struck 17 oil tankers, two gas carriers, and one tug in Black Sea waters. Six drone units ran the raid together: the 9th "Kairos" Battalion of the 414th "Magyar's Birds" Brigade, the 1st Separate Center, the 20th "K-2" Brigade, the 412th "Nemesis" Brigade, the 427th "Rarog" Brigade, and the 413th "Raid" Regiment.

The two gas carriers fell to Nemesis and Raid operators. The 1st Separate Center took the tug.

The timing was deliberate. SBS commander Robert "Madyar" Brovdi wrote that the Black Sea cluster of operation MoLoChKa ("Dairy") opened on 15 July, the Day of Ukrainian Statehood. He framed the night as a scoreline: 20 to nil.

136 ships in 10 days

The Black Sea haul adds to a running total that has climbed fast. From 6 to 15 July, Ukraine's drones struck 136 vessels of Russia's shadow fleet across both seas.

Of those, 116 went down in the Sea of Azov between 6 and 14 July, as an earlier daily count tracked. The 20 Black Sea kills on 15 July carried the campaign west into deeper, wider water.

Bigger tankers, a different aim point

The Black Sea vessels seen in the SBS video are ocean-going ships, far larger than the flat-bottomed river couriers Ukraine has been burning along the Azov feeder route. The footage from the FP-1 or FP-2 attack drones shows the operators aiming mostly for the deck structures rather than the bridges, with follow-up drones filming the fires that spread after the first strikes.

The operation's stated goal is steady disruption of Russian logistics and the money behind them. Disabling tankers, cargo ships, and support vessels complicates oil exports and limits Russia's ability to fuel its troops and the occupation force in Crimea.