Russia’s Ghost Ships and the Evolution of a Grain Smuggling Operation - bellingcat

Bloomberg reported last year that one of these vessels, the 115m long Amur 2501 had taken on grain at Sevastopol in early July before heading to the Kerch Strait where it conducted what is known as a ship to ship transfer, effectively offloading the grain it was carrying on to another vessel while at sea. This other vessel then went on to deliver i... See more

In many of the most prominent cases of grain being exported from sanctioned Crimea, media reports detailed how a fleet of handymax ships such as the Mikhail Nenashev, Matros Shevchenko (IMO: 9574195), Matros Koshka (IMO: 9550137) and Matros Pozynich (IMO: 9573816) were pictured in Sevastopol with their AIS disabled.

They would then head out into the... See more

Both ships have a carrying capacity of 28,000 deadweight tons (DWT) so if they were operating at full capacity, and if they offloaded their full cargo, then 56,000 tons of grain from occupied Ukraine has been transferred to Iran in the last eight weeks alone.