A naval drone struck a Turkish oil tanker carrying Russian crude oil in the Black Sea near Turkey’s Bosphorus Strait on Thursday.
Turkey’s minister of transportation and infrastructure, Abdulkadir Uraloglu, confirmed the incident to local media on Thursday. The oil-carrying vessel, the Altura, was sailing from Novorossiysk, Russia, to Istanbul when it was hit by a waterborne drone.
Turkish officials believe a foreign unmanned surface vehicle at water level targeted the vessel’s engine room, Uraloglu told Turkish outlet 24 TV. The ship was sailing under the flag of Sierra Leone at the time of the attack, according to Vessel Finder.
Uraloglu announced that all 27 crew members aboard, all of whom were Turkish nationals, were uninjured in the attack. The attack occurred just outside Turkey’s territorial waters, about 18 nautical miles from the Bosphorus Strait, according to France 24.
Both the European Union and the United Kingdom have imposed sanctions against Altura. The EU sanctioned the ship due to its involvement in Russian Shadow fleet activity, according to the Associated Press. Likewise, the United Kingdom imposed sanctions on the tanker on Feb. 24, 2026, citing that the Secretary of State’s office had “reasonable grounds” to believe the ship was involved in activities intended to destabilize Ukraine, such as carrying oil from Russia to other nations.
The U.K. statement with reasons for the sanctions said the Altura “is, has been or is likely to be involved in activity whose object or effect is to destabilise Ukraine or undermine or threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty or independence of Ukraine or to obtain a benefit from or support the Government of Russia.”
It was not immediately clear who launched the water attack on the Altura near the key oil shipping strait. The Black Sea is shared by Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Georgia, and Romania.
The attack comes as Russian oil has been launched into the center of the news cycle on international conflicts. The United States and European Countries have cracked down on Russian shadow fleet tankers in recent months, with the U.S. capturing the Bella 1, a sanctioned tanker, in January and the U.K. announcing on Thursday that its military would board Russian shadow fleet tankers in British waters.
U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s announcement was made as part of a push by several NATO allies to support Ukraine in its ongoing war with Russia. Volodymyr Zelensky thanked Starmer for his move on Thursday.
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“It is hardly a secret that Russia funnels illegal oil revenues directly into its war machine. Anything that cuts off that flow brings peace closer and makes Europe safer. Sanctioned tankers must be stopped, their oil seized,” Zelensky said.
Russian oil has also come up in the context of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, as Iran has claimed foreign projectiles have hit or targeted its nuclear facilities, like the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant. The Iranian Bushehr nuclear facility is heavily tied to Russia’s state-owned nuclear corporation Rosatom, which swiftly spoke out against the attack on Bushehr when it was first reported.
