Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces struck 14 more Russian vessels in the Sea of Azov overnight on 8-9 July 2026, bringing the 96-hour campaign total to 35 vessels: 32 tankers, one dry cargo ship, one ferry, and one tugboat with an associated barge. SBS commander Robert “Madyar” Brovdi published the full campaign chronology on 9 July. Five vessels appear to have been struck twice across separate nights.
The naval campaign now runs across four consecutive nights (5-6, 6-7, 7-8, and 8-9 July). Every named vessel operates the same Rostov-Taganrog to Kerch fuel corridor supplying occupied Crimea. FleetLeaks has documented that corridor’s operating fleet in a separate co-location analysis published earlier on 8 July. Two of the vessels struck overnight, Aura and Sanar-1, appeared in that analysis as candidate corridor tankers.
The four-night manifest
Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces has now identified 14 vessels by name across the campaign. Twenty-one remain publicly unidentified. Five vessels were struck on two separate nights.
| Night | Vessels struck | Publicly identified |
|---|---|---|
| 5-6 July | 2 tankers | Kapitan Barmin (IMO 9269350), Sanar-3 (IMO 9457804, Primemax class) |
| 6-7 July | 8 tankers, 1 cargo, 1 ferry | Venera-3, Sanar-1, Sanar-17, Klimena, Teti, Aleksey Savrasov, Penelope, Ivan Cheremisinov (dredger), SKS One ferry (Kerch). One cargo ship unnamed. |
| 7-8 July | 9 vessels | Tankers: Efrosinya V (IMO 1039682), Maria, Sanar-17 (repeat), Sanar-4, Klimena (repeat). Cargo ships: Donstar, Vladimir Yarygin, Feofan Shokhirev, Evgenia Z. |
| 8-9 July | 12 tankers, 1 cargo, 1 tugboat with barge | Chelsi-6, Aura (IMO 9624316), Sanar-1 (repeat), Ilya Repin (IMO 9640504), Merkuriy, Galiaskar Kamal (Panama flag, sanctioned), tug Alfeo with barge Aphrodite, Venera-3 (repeat), Penelope (repeat). Details on five more vessels are still being confirmed. |
| 4-night total | 35 vessels | 14 named, 21 unnamed |
Ukraine’s Deep Strike Center, a new coordination body inside Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, coordinated all four nights. The 414th Separate Brigade “Madyar’s Birds” (Kairos battalion) executed the first two nights. The 413th Regiment “Raid” and the 1st SBS Center joined from the third night. Ukraine’s General Staff has also reported 45 military targets struck across occupied Crimea and southern occupied Ukraine over the same window, including the Saky thermal power plant, three fuel depots, two logistics bases, and a Zhitel electronic-warfare station.
Repeat strikes: what they suggest
Five vessels appear in the campaign chronology on two separate nights: Sanar-17, Klimena, Sanar-4, Venera-3, and Penelope. The pattern is a strong signal that first strikes did not fully disable those vessels, or that the vessels returned to service quickly enough to be re-targeted within 48 hours. Ukraine’s General Staff described the 6-7 July eight-tanker strike as producing “destroyed” vessels, a claim FleetLeaks flagged at the time as a Ukrainian military assessment and not an independent damage evaluation. The subsequent repeat strikes are consistent with a mixed damage picture: some vessels operationally combat-effective enough to be struck again, others perhaps genuinely disabled, and specific per-vessel damage state unclear at this stage.
A separate operator signal emerges from the identified vessels. Aura is managed by Prime Shipping LLC-Rus, the same operator as Teti, Penelope, and Klimena. Ilya Repin is managed by Ilya Muromets JSC, the same operator as Aleksey Savrasov. Sanar-3 is managed by Rosewood Shipping LLC, the same operator as Sanar-1, Sanar-4, and Sanar-17. Three commercial operators, all previously documented in the FleetLeaks corridor analysis, now account for the majority of identified strike victims across the campaign.
Aura confirms the corridor analysis
Aura (IMO 9624316) is a 2012-built, 7,334 DWT chemical and oil products tanker sanctioned by the European Union in July 2025 and by Switzerland in August 2025. She is documented on Ukraine’s War and Sanctions portal for port calls at Port Krym (occupied Crimea) and repeated deliveries into the corridor. Her ISM manager and registered owner is Prime Shipping LLC-Rus.
Aura also appeared in FleetLeaks’s co-location analysis published on 8 July as one of the 77 candidate tankers documented at Azov corridor anchorages within a 15-month analysis window. Her strike within 24 hours of that publication confirms both the co-location methodology and the FleetLeaks-documented finding that the corridor’s operating fleet extends beyond the initially-identified strike victims.
Sanar-1 also appears in both the strike record and the FleetLeaks candidate set. She was struck once on 6-7 July and struck again on 8-9 July, becoming the sixth documented repeat-strike vessel.
Where the campaign stands
Ukraine has now struck vessels in the Sea of Azov at an average rate of roughly nine vessels per night, sustained across four consecutive nights. The struck fleet spans multiple documented commercial operators and includes at least two vessels with pre-existing Western sanctions designations (Aura and, by earlier campaign nights, Aleksey Savrasov and Venera-3/Venus III). Sanar-3 adds a third documented Rosewood Shipping vessel to the strike list, alongside Sanar-1, Sanar-4, and Sanar-17.
The corridor remains active. The Russian-installed governor of occupied Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, told Russian state media on 8 July that the peninsula’s fuel supply “remains tense and will continue for some time.” Russia has attempted to disguise fuel shipments as water and milk deliveries per Ukrainian reporting; SBS operators have adjusted target selection accordingly. Ukraine’s General Staff described the strikes as targeting Russia’s fuel logistics into occupied Ukraine at the operational level, not the strategic one.
Twenty-one of the 35 struck vessels remain unnamed as of publication. FleetLeaks continues to monitor for identifications as maritime intelligence firms and open-source investigators complete Equasis alignments for the remaining vessels.
Sources
- Kyiv Post – “Ukraine Says It Hit 35 Russian Shadow Fleet Ships in 96 Hours, Including 14 Vessels Overnight“, 9 July 2026
- United24 Media – “Russia’s Shadow Fleet Takes 35 Hits in 96 Hours as Ukraine Targets Azov Sea Logistics“, 9 July 2026
- Robert “Madyar” Brovdi’s Telegram – t.me/robert_magyar, official chronology of the 5-9 July campaign published 9 July 2026
- Ukraine’s War and Sanctions Portal (GUR) – Aura (IMO 9624316) entry documenting Prime Shipping LLC-Rus management and port calls at Port Krym
- FleetLeaks – The Azov Sea Tanker Strikes: Vessel-by-Vessel Analysis of the 5-8 July 2026 Campaign, initial campaign coverage
- FleetLeaks – Still Plenty of “Fish”: The Shadow-Fleet Tankers Still Running the Azov Corridor, 8 July 2026 co-location analysis that surfaced Aura and Sanar-1 among candidate corridor tankers
- Reuters via Global Banking and Finance – Russian-backed Crimea governor: fuel situation likely to remain tense, Aksyonov 8 July statement
- Equasis, VesselFinder, MagicPort, MaritimeOptima – IMO, DWT, flag, and operator data for each identified vessel