The Turkish-flagged LPG tanker 'Orinda' (IMO: 9240122) was set ablaze in the early hours of Tuesday at the Izmail Port in Ukraine's Odessa.
The Turkish vessel was caught in the crossfire of a Russian airstrike along the Black Sea coast and the Danube River (in the early hours of Monday), involving two ballistic missiles and 128 UAVs/drones.
15 people have been evacuated from a village in Romania after a Russian drone attacked a gas ship by the Ukrainian shore.
— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) November 17, 2025
There is a risk of an explosion, so people were brought to safety.
Russia is a threat to Europe. pic.twitter.com/G6CsZVqbAM
Out of these, Ukraine's air defences shot down 91 UAVs and drones, but the tanker still suffered serious damage, leading to one injury, but no casualties. A shutdown procedure was soon initiated, and the 16 crew members onboard the Orinda were evacuated.
The vessel, which has a deadweight tonnage of 9,352 tonnes, has been flagged for a risk of explosion, as a result of which about 100-150 residents from the Romanian village of Plauru—located just 500m away on the other side of the Odessa border—have been evacuated.
Tudor Cernega, the mayor of the Ceatalchioi commune (that includes Plauru), said that the situation was "very serious", and that the ship "could explode at any moment".
According to officials involved in the firefighting efforts, the Orinda had been offloading liquified petroleum gas (LPG) at the time of the Russian strike, because of which a fire had broken out in the vessel's gas pumping equipment.
This follows a severe Ukrainian offensive on the Russian port of Novorossiysk last Friday—as a part of the nearly four-year-old Russia-Ukraine war—which temporarily led to its infrastructure going offline and a complete halt in operations.
After a two-day suspension, Russia’s largest Black Sea export hub resumed operations on Sunday, a Reuters report said, citing two industry sources.
