Russia’s Ministry of Defense released a video on Tuesday showing part of a naval operation in which military personnel landed by helicopter on a cargo ship in the Black Sea, in an inspection that Ukraine condemned as illegal.
The video, the second to appear since Sunday’s episode, was verified by The New York Times. It appears to have been filmed by Russian forces, in part from a head-mounted camera.
“Stop the engine! Stop the engine!” a Russian officer, machine gun pointed, shouted in English to the crew as he walked through the open door onto the bridge of the cargo ship, the Sukru Okan. “Shut up and listen to me.”
In the video, the three crew members are standing on the bridge with their hands on their heads. One leaned over and pressed a button on the ship’s control panel, apparently to obey the Russian command by cutting the ship’s engines. The three men obeyed the order to sit down, kneeling.
“Good day, sir,” said the Russian official to a man in jeans and a T-shirt, who introduced himself as the ship’s captain. “I am an officer of the Russian Navy. My actions will be recorded on video.” He instructed the captain to speak in English, the main language of international shipping. None of the people shown in the video have been identified by name.
The Russian officer then demands to know why the ship hasn’t stopped, pointing to a radio, apparently to indicate that an order to stop has been sent. The captain, speaking in halting English, replied “misunderstood.” He appeared to blame the ship’s chief engineer, who he said was in the engine room rather than on the bridge, for disobeying his order to stop.
Russia’s Ministry of Defense said Sunday that its crew fired warning shots to stop the ship before the navy helicopter landed, but that part of the episode was not recorded in either of the two videos. The videos provide the only visual evidence of the Russian operation, and it is not possible to determine the full scope of what took place.
The earlier video, posted Monday by Russian military bloggers and news organizations and verified by The New York Times, shows a Russian helicopter approaching the ship and the ship’s crew members sitting on deck in surrender position. The Sukru Okan sails under the flag of Palau, an island nation in the western Pacific, but is owned and operated by a Turkish company, according to the Equasis shipping database.
The forced inspection appears to be the first since Russia last month refused to extend an agreement allowing Ukraine to export its grain across the Black Sea. Since then, tensions have risen sharply in the Black Sea, a theater of war in Ukraine.
The Russian attacks and shipping pressure are aimed at severely reducing Ukraine’s ability to export its grains and other food crops, said Alexis Ellender, a global analyst at Kpler, a commodities analytics firm.
Mr. Ellender said it seemed unlikely that Moscow would restore the Black Sea grain deal. In its absence, Ukraine has sought alternative export routes including its ports on the Danube River, but Russia has launched strikes against two of those ports in recent weeks. Sunday’s incident could raise shipping insurance premiums and freight costs but is unlikely to deter shippers, Mr. Ellender said.
It was not immediately possible to reach the captain of the Sukru Okan or the ship’s owner. The ship was heading to the Ukrainian river port of Izmail, according to Kyiv and Moscow, but for the last 24 hours it has been standing off the coast of the Romanian Danube River port of Sulina, according to the Marine Traffic website.
Jenny Gross contributed reporting.