MV Vereshchagino is a Ukrainian, former Soviet medium trawler (seiner[3] to be exact), built in 1978 and later converted to coastal passenger shipping.

[5] On April 24, 2000, Vereshchagino survived a direct hit by a P-35 Progress anti-ship missile fired by Russian Navy from Sevastopol.

In four seasons, 1968 to 1971, Leninskaya Kuznitsa built 40 ships to the original Project 502E specification (Zhelezny Potok sub-class).

Eash trawler had gross displacement of 1,192 tons, a 735 kW (1000 hp) main engine for propulsion and an additional 440 kW (600 hp) engine to power on-board freezers, which were capable of deep-freezing 12 tons of fish daily.

In the 1990s Vereshchagino abandoned fishing business and switched to shipping small general cargoes from Turkey to Ukrainian ports.

[10] Instead of the target, the missile locked onto Vereshchagino and pierced through the middle of its superstructure, leaving telltale inverted-eight entry and exit holes and destroying the captain's quarters and the ship's radio shack.

On April 20, an OTR-21 Tochka missile, fired during a routine exercise of Ukrainian armed forces, rammed an apartment block in Brovary, 130 km (81 mi) from its launch site.