A RUSSIAN navy reconnaissance ship has sunk off Istanbul after colliding with a freighter in the Black Sea.
All 78 personnel on board the Liman are accounted for after it collided with the Togo-flagged freighter Youzarsif H.
The Turkish safety authority said 15 Russian sailors were rescued after the collision.
The freighter was carrying livestock, and all of its crew is safe.
A hole was punched in the starboard side of the Liman during the collision, which occurred around midday on Thursday about 25 miles north-west of the Bosphorus Strait.
The cause of the collision was not immediately clear.
The Liman was part of the Black Sea Fleet. The Interfax news agency reported that it spent much of the winter in the Mediterranean off the coast of Syria and returned to the Black Sea to monitor Nato exercises in February.
The rescued Russian sailors are all aboard a Turkish rescue vessel and will be picked up by a nearby Russian cargo ship, the Ulus Star, the Russian defence ministry said.
It said the cargo ship would deliver the sailors to the home base of the Black Sea Fleet, which is on Crimea, the peninsula Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
