According to international media, citing local sources, it would be the Vasilii Bikov patrol ship (main collage and interior photo).
Russia has not yet confirmed the incident.
UPDATE: The Russian warship Vasilii Bikov was caught entering the port of Sevastopol with its hull damaged by fire.
Reports of a Moscow military ship on fire in the Sevastopol port area have been circulating since Thursday.
The Kiev army has not officially released information regarding the strikes executed on this target, the Ukrainian press writes.
The incident reported on Friday comes after three other cargo ships loaded with grain left, on the same day, Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea, as part of the agreement signed separately by Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul, with Turkey and the United Nations, in order to lift the blockade on agricultural exports of Kyiv.
A first ship left, on Monday, from Odesa, bound for Lebanon.
“We expect Turkish and UN security guarantees to continue to work and food exports from our ports to become stable and predictable for all grain market participants,” Ukrainian Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov wrote on Facebook on Friday after the departure of the three ships.
What is known about the patrol vessel Vasilii Bikov
Vasilii Bikov is a Project 22160 class vessel.
It entered the equipment of the Russian naval forces in December 2018 and took part, along with the cruiser Moskva, sunk in the meantime, in the February 24, 2022 attack on the Ukrainian garrison on Snake Island.
In March, Kiev forces announced that they had damaged the vessel in a missile attack.
The ship was later reported returning to the port of Sevastopol with no visible damage.
Vasilii Bikov has a crew of 80 sailors and officers.
It is equipped with an AK-176MA cannon, caliber 76.2 mm, two MTPU heavy machine guns, caliber 14.5 mm, and several submarine grenade launchers.
It also has torpedo launchers and Kalibr missiles.
In June, the ship had a Tor-M2KM anti-aircraft defense module installed on the helicopter deck.
Friday’s incident looks like a Ukrainian response to what happened shortly after the signing of the Istanbul accords.
On Saturday, July 23, Ukraine blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin for the Odesa bombing and said Moscow would bear “full responsibility” for a failure of the grain export agreement signed in Istanbul on Friday.
By striking the port of Odesa with missiles not a day after Russia’s commitments in Istanbul, the Russian president “spat in the face of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who have made huge efforts to reach this agreement,” said Oleg Nikolenko, spokesman for the Foreign Ministry in Kyiv.
“The enemy attacked the Odesa commercial port with Kalibr cruise missiles. Two missiles were shot down by anti-aircraft defense, two hit the port’s infrastructure,” the Southern Operational Command of Ukraine announced on the Telegram network on Saturday.
On Sunday, Russia claimed responsibility for the Odesa attack, claiming that its missiles destroyed Ukrainian “military infrastructure” in a “precision” attack on the port of Odesa.
“The Kalibr missiles destroyed the military infrastructure in the port of Odesa with a high-precision strike,” Maria Zaharova (pictured), spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, wrote on Telegram.
Zakharova claimed that Russian gunfire destroyed a Ukrainian patrol boat.
