Sanctioned Russian Cargo Ships Made More Than 100 Stops at Turkish Ports

According to shipping records seen by The Wall Street Journal, the sanctioned Russian vessels have made more than 100 stops at ports along Turkey’s coast since May 2022. Those stops have continued in recent weeks.

Some have undergone repair work or received other services prohibited under the U.S. measures, raising the risk that Washington could sanction Turkish businesses for helping Russia evade Western attempts to choke off Moscow’s ability to support its military.

“Russia is making every attempt to surreptitiously acquire material to supply its war efforts,” said a senior U.S. Treasury Department official.

The extent to which sanctioned commercial Russian vessels have relied on Turkish ports hasn’t previously been reported.

The U.S. has been pressuring countries such as Turkey to cut Russia’s military supply chain in order to deprive President Vladimir Putin of fresh arms and munitions for the war in Ukraine.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan instead has leveraged the conflict as a means to expand Turkey’s influence in the Black Sea region. He has expanded trade with Russia while helping to broker an agreement to ship Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea and has offered to help facilitate peace talks between Ukraine and Russia.

The visits by Russian ships could raise tensions between Ankara and Washington at a critical time in relations between the two NATO allies. The U.S. is currently attempting to persuade Turkey to allow Sweden to join the alliance, potentially in exchange for a $20 billion sale of new F-16 warplanes.

“Because of the rapport between Erdogan and Putin and the posture Turkey’s taking on Russia, Turkey doesn’t want to be seen to be very hard-nosed about these sanctions against Russia,” said Alper Coskun, a former director for international security affairs at the Turkish Foreign Ministry.

The recent armed insurrection in Russia could strengthen Ankara’s position relative to Moscow, but isn’t expected to significantly alter Erdogan and Putin’s economic and security partnership.

The sanctioned vessels have made stops at nearly two dozen port facilities on Turkey’s Black Sea, Mediterranean and Sea of Marmara coastlines. In some cases, the ships made onward journeys to other destinations such as Egypt, Syria and Iran. Other ships have frequently ferried between Turkey and Russia, suggesting a continuous trade in goods.

The Russian and Turkish governments didn’t respond to requests for comment on the matter.

Russia has bought items it needs for its military, such as steel, vehicle parts and electronics from Turkey since the beginning of the war, raising further concerns in Washington, the Journal has previously reported.

Moscow has turned to civilian cargo ships to transport military supplies during the war, in part to help circumvent a ban on Russian and Ukrainian warships entering the Black Sea that Turkey imposed under an international treaty that governs the Turkish straits. Turkey, Iraq and Jordan have also restricted access to Russian military flights, limiting Moscow’s ability to move equipment and troops in and out of its bases in Syria.

Last year, Ukraine accused Russia of using a civilian cargo ship to transport an air-defense system from Syria. The Ukrainian government also summoned the Turkish ambassador in Kyiv to protest Russian ships bringing weapons through the Turkish-controlled Bosporus.

Turkish officials say they can’t block civilian ships from entering the Black Sea because international law guarantees their freedom of navigation.

Most of the ships are owned by private companies, some of which have been contracted by the Russian Ministry of Defense, according to the companies’ own public statements and the U.S. State and Treasury departments. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov last year said that the country’s new naval doctrine “will ensure the introduction of civilian ships and crews into the Navy.”

At least two of the sanctioned ships that stopped in Turkish ports last year have sailed on a route that, according to the U.S., Iran has used in the past to deliver armed drones across the Caspian Sea to Russia, ship-tracking data show. Iranian drones have been used in multiple waves of attacks in Ukraine.

One ship, Port Olya-1, made at least one stop at the Iranian port of Amirabad on the Caspian Sea in May 2022 and then returned to Russia, according to shipping data from Lloyd’s List Intelligence.

The ship later made two port calls in Turkey in September last year.

This month, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby identified Amirabad as the place where the drones leave Iran on ships on their way to Russia. Ships sailing the Caspian can also enter the Black Sea via a series of waterways in southern Russia, including the Don and Volga rivers.

Another ship, Port Olya-2, also visited Amirabad last year, the data from Lloyd’s List Intelligence show. In late May, the ship ran aground in Russia while listing Amirabad as its destination, Russian authorities said. The ship made at least three port calls in Turkey last year—one in June and two in October.

The two vessels are owned by the same Russian company, MG-Flot LLC, which changed its name last year after it was sanctioned by the U.S., Russian corporate records show. The State Department said last year that vessels owned and managed by the company, which lists an address in the Russian Republic of Dagestan and was originally named TransmorFlot LLC, transported arms for the Russian government. The company didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Both ships switched off their devices feeding data into the Automatic Identification System, an international network that tracks most commercial vessels, during various points on their voyages on the Caspian, the data show. The practice is increasingly common among Russian ships transporting weapons, oil and grain stolen from Ukraine, in order to conceal their movements, according to Western officials and military and shipping analysts.

“Russia is increasingly acting like North Korea on the oceans,” said Eric Woods, a researcher tracking Russian weapons shipments at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies in Washington. “Placing them under sanctions has really constrained their ability to move around the world.”

Multiple ships owned by another sanctioned firm, the Northern Shipping Company, made dozens of stops in Turkey over the past year, shipping data show. The U.S. blacklisted the company for operating in Russia’s “defense and related materiel sector.” The company says on its website that it has worked for the Russian Ministry of Defense developing infrastructure in the Arctic. One of the company’s ships, Inzhener Trubin, was also photographed in 2018 carrying military vehicles.

Another Northern Shipping vessel, the Mikhail Lomonosov, made 14 separate visits to the Turkish port of Samsun on the Black Sea over the past year, shipping records show. The company and the port didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Turkish businesses and institutions have sometimes bowed to U.S. pressure to prevent Russia from avoiding sanctions. Turkish banks stopped using a Russian payments system after it came under American sanctions last year. Turkish officials also said earlier this year they would clamp down on the delivery to Russia of dual-use items such as certain kinds of electronics.

But at least four sanctioned Russian ships have made port calls in Turkey since Erdogan’s re-election last month, shipping records show. Those include a visit by the Ascalon, which docked for weeks at the Tuzla shipyard on the edge of Istanbul.

The Inzhener Trubin has made two separate stops in Turkey in recent weeks, one at Iskenderun in southern Turkey and another at Tuzla. The port didn’t respond to a request for comment.

“There’s an enormous effort that the Russians are putting on the past year to make the use of civilian cargo vessels for military support a more systematic thing,” said Michael Petersen, the founding director of the Russia Maritime Studies Institute and professor at the U.S. Naval War College.

Erdogan’s government has yet to issue a clear public policy on some sanctions-related issues, including the port calls of sanctioned ships, and his government is increasingly in Washington’s sights.

“The potential that things could blow up is always there,” said Coskun, the former Turkish Foreign Ministry official. “It depends on how far both sides decide to go.”

—Georgi Kantchev contributed to this article.

Write to Jared Malsin at [email protected]