At this point I believe I have the most complete track of grain smuggling from Ukraine for the past four years. This is what it looks like.
This information is partial and single-source; at this point, it is almost entirely drawn from the SEAKRIME project archives at myrotvorets. To be fair, I don’t expect that corroboration and additional prospecting is going to yield much more, but until I go and look at the cargo data myself or find an additional source attesting to it, I’m not going to go signing my name on it happening.
Basic observations
For a total of 102 data points, I record the following:
total 575,587 tons, average shipment 8,341 tons
by year:
2018: 17,487 tons in 6 shipments
2019: 96,700 tons in 32 shipments
2020: 34,100 tons in 9 shipments
2021: 19,700 tons in 4 shipments
2022: 403,400 tons in 49 shipments - 46 of which occur after the war starts
earliest recorded shipment is the ALIANCA running an unrecorded amount of grain from Kerch to Rostov on August 2, 2018
smallest shipment is 2,000 tons - the BELLATRIX, departing February 13th, 2020, destination Kavkaz
largest shipment at 30,000 tons - only the MATROS POZYNICH runs loads this big, for instance, on May 20, 2022, from Sevastopol to Latakia
Destinations are:
Rostov
Tartus
Beirut
Kavkaz (Кавказ)
Alexandria
Karasu
Lattakia
Samsun
Deronje
Nemrut
Alexandria
Iskenderun
"Syria" (that's all that they write, which is helpful, thanks)
Bandirma
Izmir
just "Turkey" (again, very helpful, thank you)
and a bulk carrier used for intershipment called the AFINA.
There are 34 ships involved:
Alianca
Souria
Crystal Galaxy
Capt Abeda
Narsis
Sormovsky-48
Nadezhda
Antalya
Randa
Vera
Laodicea
Grace A
Finikia
Lambro Kachioni
Afina
Bellatrix
Zhibek Zholy
Peresvet
Aleksandr Grin
Mikhail Nenashev
Matros Koshka
Matros Pozynich
Fedor
St. Nikolay
M. Andreev
Capitan Korchin
Volgo Don 205
Kapitan Skachkov
Amur-2501
Lavrion
Volgo Balt 106
Sv Constantine
Volgo Don 5043
Ozernyi 207 (tug)
Of the 34 ships historically involved in grain smuggling, just for 2022, there are a smaller number of ships involved:
Souria
Finikia
Laodicea
Sormovsky-48
Vera
Nadezhda
Aleksandr Grin
Mikhail Nenashev
Matros Koshka
Matros Pozynich
Volgo Don 205
Ozernyi 207 (tug)
Volgo Don 5043
Sv Constantine
Capitan Korchin
Volgo Balt 106
Lavrion
Amur-2501
Fedor
M. Andreev
St. Nikolay
Kapitan Skachkov
In 2022, grain so far has gone to:
Lattakia
Deronje
Turkey
“Syria” (presumably Latakia, but this should be verifiable)
Kavkaz (Кавказ)
Alexandria
Iskenderun
Nemrut
“Turkey” (this needs to be nailed down in the data set)
Izmir
Samsun
Tartus
Bandirma
Additional unstructured data points
Portions of this are in the research dump.
The overall pattern we’re seeing is that these ships are carrying grain, most often to Kavkaz, where it’s presumably mixed with Russian grain or sold.
Current reporting from produce markets in Crimea suggests a heavily price-controlled situation, which also accords with reports that farmers in Kherson area are being forced to sell their crops for “pennies on the dollar”.
These ships keep turning off their AIS transponders as they enter port, and indicate deceptive destinations on AIS - this is, in fact, a distinguishing feature of almost this entire data set. As a result, oftentimes, the only way that observations can be made of where these ships are ending up is satellite trace, or observers in-port.
The number of ships that can actually carry large loads is somewhat limited. Only the MATROS POZYNICH and the MIKHAIL NENASHEV carry loads over 27k tonnes; the FINIKIA carries up to 17k tonnes; the LAODICEA carries up to 11,500 and the SOURIA carries up to 10,500 tonnes, but that’s basically it.
For a ship the size of the LAODICEA and the SOURIA, as of 2019, loading ideally takes about 5 days but in practice can go up to ten days. The actual sea trip is substantially shorter than that.
Virtually every shipment we’ve seen out of Sevastopol comes out of the AVLITA, now AVAL, grain terminal, which is, somewhat annoyingly, owned 75% by Rinat Akhmetov through SCM Holdings.
In practice, this means if you see a ship that has its AIS off and it’s showing up at AVLITA’s grain terminal… it’s almost certainly smuggling grain.
Immediate next directions
So, fairly obviously, as much as possible needs to be corroborated in an additional source, preferably secondary sources (a journalist from a fact-checked outlet, an analyst for a government institution) rather than primary sources (raw cargo shipping records and positional data). A large point of this is so that this is capable of being easily verified by the people who actually implement sanctions.
I don’t expect there’s going to be much additional sourcing for any of this beyond the 2022 shipments, though, to be fair, those are the most interesting by far.
And I love these folks, don’t get me wrong, but we can’t go sanctioning people because a bunch of Ukrainian randos on an OSINT site said so; multiple public-domain, verifiable sources are going to be the bare minimum here. The more credible, ideologically disinterested, corroborating sources I can find, the better a basis I have for submitting an SDN designation request.
Since it’s fairly easy, the immediate next step is going to be making a timeline out of known public events for Crane Marine Contractor, LLC - they’ve been in a surprising number of lawsuits - and then try to make sense out of what’s happening since ‘18.
Rounding up the other ship owners involved in ‘22, and for that matter all the ship-owners in the entire process, should also be relatively easy.
From there, a synthetic view onto the entire process - a story to tell, that is - is going to emerge, I’m pretty confident.