🇷🇺⚔️🇺🇦🇷🇴 As part of its naval blockade against Ukraine, Russia is now trying to shut down maritime traffic in the Danube Delta negatively affecting Romania

Romania has launched another search-and-rescue operation in the Black Sea after the San Marino-flagged vessel — WINE TRADER — reportedly came under a drone attack just outside of Romanian territorial waters, approximately 13 nautical miles southeast of Sulina.

The vessel issued a distress call at around 07:00 local time after a fire broke out aboard. According to initial reports, 12 crew members were on board, with eight currently reported missing.

Sailors aboard nearby vessels reportedly said they witnessed the ship being struck by two drones.

Romanian authorities have deployed the ARSVOM rescue vessel Apollo and a helicopter to conduct search-and-rescue operations as efforts continue to locate the missing crew members.

On video is the Chemical/Oil Products tanker, WINE TRADER, surveyed from a ARSVOM helicopter. The ship departed from Tunisia and was due to dock in Sulina. It is owned by an Italian company.

WINE TRADER was hit a few 3-5 miles east of the other Chemical/Oil Products tanker, YARA J, that was disabled yesterday.

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🇷🇴🚢🇺🇦 The Sulina Canal is the middle of the three main branches of the Danube river that discharge into the Black Sea

The canal was built by the United Kingdom in collaboration with the Ottoman Empire after their victory in the Crimean War to boost trade on the Danube and the Black Sea and prevent Russia from levying taxes on foreign merchant ships as it harmed British trade, a right which the Russian Empire won from the Ottomans who exercised sovereignty over the river and delta following the 1829 Treaty of Adrianople.

As the Sulina branch was wide and shallow with the deepest point being 9 metres (30 ft) and its shallowest at 2.5 metres (8.2 ft), British engineers dug a series of dykes between 1858 and 1872 to make a straight line and shorten the travel distance and a series of jetties at the branch's mouth which were later extended by the Romanian government several times in the 20th century in addition to deepening the bar to make the branch navigable for sea-going vessels.

After the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, the Sulina canal became entirely administered by Romania and remained the only navigable branch of the Danube for sea-going vessels up until 2008 when Ukraine opened up the Bystroye Canal on the northernmost Kilia Branch, to give Ukrainian vessels an alternative route that avoided the Romanian tolls on the Sulina branch and a relatively shorter and easier accessway to the Ukrainian ports on the Danube.

In 2023 as part of its naval blockade of Ukraine, Russia began the systematic bombing of Ukraine's ports on the Danube and attacked most ships that docked in them in an attempt to destroy Ukraine's trade so traffic shifted again back to the Sulina Branch which is under the nominal protection of NATO and outside of the theater of war or it was until a few days ago.

Russian attacks on ships inside Romanian territorial waters is a serious escalation of the conflict showing unwavering commitment by Moscow to cripple Ukraine's imports & exports. The next step on the escalation ladder could be to attack and sink a merchant vessel travelling on the Sulina Canal as there is a precedent for it.

In September 1991, the newly independent Ukraine deliberately sunk an East German ship, the Rostock, at the narrowest point of the Sulina branch near the Romanian village of Partizani which blocked off ship traffic for 14 years until 2005 when the ship was finally removed after it had been cut by divers into multiple pieces. Romania and Ukraine (and the USSR before its dissolution) had a long-standing dispute over shipping tolls in the Danube Delta.

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🇪🇸🤝🇲🇦 King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia of Spain were photographed giving a sign of respect to the 100 or so Moroccans who died while trying to cross into the Spanish territories of Ceuta and Melilla in late July.

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🇾🇪❌🇾🇪 — Additional video show smoke rising from the presidential palace following what local describe as 5 consecutive explosions, following the Houthis (Ansarallah) missile attack.