New Delhi, June 6 -- The men were in ballast, heading north to load grain. They had no part in the war's political architecture, no stake in the sanctions regime their ships may or may not have helped circumvent. By just before two in the morning on June 5, three of them were dead on the deck of a burning vessel in the Sea of Azov, and two more had already been killed on a sister ship struck an hour earlier. All five were Azerbaijani nationals. Ukraine's drone forces had hit both ships, and the commander responsible for the strikes said nothing publicly about who died.

the MV Natra, sailing under the flag of Belize, and the MV Zirkon, registered in Palau - were travelling in ballast from Turkey to the Russian port of Rostov-on-Don to loa...