Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces announced overnight on 5 June that drones had struck five Russian-linked ships at the occupied ports of Mariupol and Berdiansk and in coastal waters of the temporarily occupied territories. Within hours the operation took on an international dimension, after Azerbaijan said five of its nationals had been killed aboard two cargo vessels in the same waters.
Ukraine's account
Robert Brovdi, commander of Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces, described the targets as illegally loitering dry-cargo carriers and a tanker that he said were moving stolen Ukrainian grain alongside fuel and military supplies. Their operators, he said, had painted over the ships' names and switched off radars to dodge detection, and he cast the raid as an effort to sever Russian smuggling logistics.
His command did not confirm any casualties or respond to Baku's statement. Overnight on 4 June, Suspilne reported, Ukrainian forces had already struck the dry-cargo ship Leonid Pestrikov a second time at Berdiansk, leaving it unfit to carry freight.
Azerbaijan and Russia report deaths
Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry, citing information handed to it by Russia, said two cargo ships carrying 25 Azerbaijani citizens were hit in Taganrog Bay, killing five and injuring three. It named the vessels as the Natra and the Zircon, said neither belonged to the Azerbaijani state, and reported that the injured were taken to hospital in the Russian city of Yeysk and that embassy staff had traveled to the scene. Baku stopped short of naming who carried out the strike.
Russia's Foreign Ministry blamed Ukraine, casting the attack as proof of what it called the "terrorist" character of Kyiv's leadership, and said the pair of ships had been sailing from Türkiye to the grain port of Rostov-on-Don — an account that clashes with Brovdi's portrayal of the targets as smugglers loading at occupied harbors. Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin offered condolences to the crews' families. Russia's Defense Ministry separately claimed it shot down 123 Ukrainian drones overnight, a tally Kyiv did not corroborate.
A strike on mending Moscow-Baku ties
The deaths fall on a relationship the two capitals had only lately begun to mend. Ties fractured after a Russian air-defense missile downed an Azerbaijan Airlines jet near Aktau on 25 December 2024, killing 38, and deteriorated further in June 2025 when two ethnic-Azerbaijani brothers died in Russian custody in Yekaterinburg. Moscow and Baku reached a settlement over the crash on 15 April, with Russia acknowledging its air defenses and agreeing to pay compensation.
The episode fits a widening Ukrainian campaign against traffic in the Azov–Black Sea basin, where Kyiv and Western governments accuse Russia of shipping grain plundered from occupied Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Donetsk, and Luhansk regions through Rostov-on-Don and Taganrog.
