A Russian flagged cargo vessel appears to have been pictured delivering ballistic missiles from Iran. Satellite imagery from Maxar, shows the ship docked at a port in Russia around one week ago.
Port Olya 3 ship had moved around 220 short-range ballistic missiles – with a range of over 70 miles – to Russia via the Caspian Sea to be used in Vladimir Putin‘s war in Ukraine, a Ukrainian source told Sky News.
According to the source said the ship arrived pulled into the Russian port last week, on September 4.
Sky News said satellite photos examined by its data & forensics team showed the vessel at the port on that day, while ship-tracking data shows the Port Olya 3 at the port of Amirabad in Iran on August 29, just six days earlier.
The source said it’s believed Fateh-360 ballistic missiles were loaded onto large cargo train after the vessel arrived in Russia.
The image shared by the outlet of the ship, which was taken by a Maxar satellite, was captured at 0751 UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) last Wednesday.
Another satellite image two days later appeared to show the ship had left the port, though no data has been shared since August 29. The ship arrived at the Russian port six days after last sharing its position.
Any ship of at least 300 gross tonnes is required to have AIS transponders, which allow vessels to receive data from other ships and transmit their identity and location, by the International Maritime Organization.
But the news outlet says its analysts often see ships switching tracking off to hide their movements, claiming untraceable ships are becoming more common in the Caspian Sea as Tehran and Moscow continue to trade arms.
In the Caspian Sea, untraceable ships have become more common as Iran and Russia continue to trade weapons. This strategy has been labelled “dark port calls”.
The limited tracking data available shows the Port Olya 3 regularly travels between Iran and Russia.
It is not clear where the ballistic missiles were taken once they arrived at the Russian port.
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