As the occupiers were forced to admit, on the morning of November 2, a tugboat caught fire in the Kerch Strait. Various “official reports” stated that the fire originated in the stern or the wheelhouse.
Judging by the published photographs, the fire was extensive, but there was no visible external damage to the tugboat.
The cause of the fire, accompanied by the occupiers’ claims of allegedly “downed and destroyed drones” in the air and sea waters off Crimea, is not disclosed, nor is the name of the tugboat, with only the statement that “the fire was contained” and supposedly “there were no casualties.”
The fire on the tugboat was extinguished, and its 14 crew members were evacuated using the rescue boat “Mercury.”
However, it was discovered that the tug in question was the “Eurostar 1 Ksenija,” aka “Eurostar-1,” a Russian-flagged pusher tug of Project R809 type built in 1987 in Romania and departing from the port of Azov on October 16. As can be seen from photographs of the fire, it broke out while this tug was transporting an oil barge.
This tug is supervised by the “Russian Classification Society,” formerly the “Russian River Register,” and this vessel twice, in 2016 and 2020, caused major emergencies on the aggressor’s inland waterways, including oil spills and driving a barge onto the Volga sandbank.
This tugboat, along with its three sister ships, is controlled by the aggressor’s holding company, “Baltic Fuel Company”, linked to Russian tycoons Igor Tyan and Stanislav Korneev, and also operates the infamous Volgoneft-41 and Volgoneft-56 tankers, which are prone to accidents.
