A Russian intelligence ship sank off Turkey’s Black Sea coast after a collision, The trawler collided with a livestock freighter north of Istanbul while sailing in fog. All 78 crewmembers of the Russian vessel were accounted for. The ship, the Liman, was densely packed with a large collection of various types of antennae clearly visible in the picture accompanying the article
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Given the decrepit state of the Russian Navy, its bilges were probably already half full of water that its pumps couldn’t pump out faster than it came in through the rust holes before the Turkish freighter tapped it, and its bridge crew was probably already two sheets to the wind before they drunkenly issued the order to abandon ship rather than try to save the ship by patching the hole. Every time someone tries to hype up the threat of the Russian Navy as the reason why we need 11 carrier groups, I just start giggling hysterically… the Russian Navy has to send tugboats with its surface ships when they deploy in order to tow them back to port when their engines fail. That’s how a big a threat they are. SIGH.
The “Liman” looked a lot better than the rust buckets the Soviet Navy have positioned off the coast of Shemya. At least they painted the rust instead of trying to ignore it like the Soviets did. Both the Coast Guard and Japanese trawlers had to render assistance during my time on Shemya.
Because of all the antennae they have to increase the ballast to keep the vessels from rolling over. It was a really bad design for the use.
The “Liman” was apparently a survey vessel built in 1970 that was converted for military use in 1989, as the Soviet Union was winding down. Probably a few too many of the rust buckets off Shemya ended up sinking so they dug up whatever hulls they weren’t using at the moment and re-purposed them. So yes, definitely wasn’t designed as a spy vessel. And BTW, found a photo of its last trip through the Bosporus. It was definitely rustier than the file photo that most news outlets ran.
And you guessed right that it rolled over before sinking, just watched the video of it going down.
That was a shallow water vessel and they piled all of that iron on top – an incident waiting to happen. All of those antennae and no navigational radar that would have seen the cattle boat. Our local fishing fleet has better navigation aids than Russian intel vessels – pathetic really.