Martin Herem said a Russian warship was hit in the Gulf of Finland at about 05:30 on Wednesday. He said smoke came from the ship afterwards, and that it then went back towards St Petersburg.
Elina Valtonen said the Baltic Sea remained stable and safe and that there was no threat of any kind to marine traffic. Herem told ERR the ship was hit during a period when drones were also moving through the area around Ust-Luga.
Ust-Luga and the Naro-Fominsk
Ukraine's SBU security service said it targeted the Naro-Fominsk as part of a broader drone operation against Russia's Ust-Luga oil export depot on the Baltic coast. The ship was described by the SBU as a Buyan-M type small corvette carrying Kalibr and Oniks cruise missiles. The extent of damage and casualties remained unclear.
Herem said Ukrainian drones attacked the Ust-Luga region from midnight until about 06:00 and mostly flew close to the Estonian border while staying in Russian airspace. He also said one drone briefly entered Estonian airspace from Latvia before heading towards Russia, while Nato aircraft based in the Baltic states were in the air.
Baltic Sea traffic and cables
Defence officials were understood to have stressed to Kyiv that the Gulf of Finland is a relatively narrow waterway used by oil tankers and civilian vessels and is also home to subsea data cables. That makes the reported strike different from the repeated attacks on Russian and Ukrainian vessels in the Black Sea since Russia's full-scale invasion began in February 2022.
Tykhyy called Moscow's allegations that Kyiv had used the airspace of the Baltic states to attack Russia baseless
, while also saying that incidents might occur when Russia diverts drones from its airspace using electronic warfare
. The practical question now is how much damage the Naro-Fominsk suffered after smoke was seen and the ship turned back towards St Petersburg.
Estonia and Russia
Martin Herem said the Ust-Luga port fires were visible over the border in Estonia, and that several storage tanks at the terminal were thought to have been hit overnight on Wednesday. He said the drones mostly stayed close to the Estonian border, which kept the episode tied to the same narrow stretch of water and airspace that made the ship attack notable in the first place.
