- President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Russia may lose its ships if it keeps attacking Ukrainian ports.
- Russia's attacks have killed civilians, but Ukrainian forces have recently hit back with sea drones.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Russia may find itself without ships by the end of the war if it continues to attack Ukrainian ports.
"We don't have as many weapons, but if they continue to shoot, they may be left without vessels by the end of the war," Zelenskyy told Argentina's La Nacion newspaper, according to a CNN translation.
Zelenskyy's comments were published days after Ukrainian exploding sea drones struck a Russian oil tanker and a Russian warship.
While Russia's conventional naval power dwarfs Ukraine's, Ukraine has been needling Russia's fleet with maritime drones. At the end of July, Ukraine demonstrated the capabilities of a fast and powerful new sea drone when it launched a strike on the Kerch Bridge in Crimea, Ukraine.
The drone-technology expert Stephen Wright told Insider earlier this month that Ukraine's maritime drones were a growing threat to Russia because they were being packed with large amounts of explosives.
And defending against them isn't easy. Wright said that putting up defensive floating barriers, as Russia has attempted to do at key ports, could be circumvented by blasting through them with more drones.
Zelenskyy said in his comments to La Nacion that Ukraine had the right to import and export goods through the Black Sea, which Russia is blockading.
"If Russia continues to dominate the Black Sea and block it with firing missiles, then Ukraine will do the same, which is a fair defense of Ukraine's capabilities," he said, according to CNN's translation.
In July, Russia refused to renew a deal brokered with the UN and Turkey to allow a sea corridor for grain exports from Ukraine. The UN's Secretary-General, António Guterres, condemned Russia's withdrawal and said it would end a "lifeline" for global food security.
Russia has since ramped up its attacks on Ukrainian ports and recently made a strike that killed some civilians just a few hundred yards from a border with Romania, a member of NATO.
The Kremlin also said that vessels traveling through the Black Sea to Ukraine would be "considered to be involved in the Ukrainian conflict on the side of Kyiv."
Ukraine made similar comments about ships traveling to Russian-controlled ports, and Zelenskyy vowed to respond to attacks on Ukraine's civilian populations in the interview published Sunday.