When the bulk cargo ship Laodicea docked in Lebanon last summer, Ukrainian diplomats said the vessel was carrying grain stolen by Russia and urged Lebanese officials to impound the ship.
Moscow called the allegation "false and baseless," and Lebanon's prosecutor general sided with the Kremlin and declared that the 10,000 tons of barley and wheat flour wasn't stolen and allowed the ship to unload.
The grain and flour carried by the 138-metre-long Laodicea likely started its journey in the southern Ukrainian city of Melitopol, which Russia seized in the early days of the war. Siguta, along with four other top Russian occupation officials, was sanctioned by the U.S. government on Sept. 15 for overseeing the theft and export of Ukrainian grain.
The Kremlin has denied stealing any grain, but Russia's state-run news agency Tass reported on June 16 that Ukrainian grain was being trucked to Crimea, resulting in long lines at border checkpoints. Tass later reported that grain from Melitopol had arrived in Crimea and that additional shipments were expected, bound for customers in the Middle East and Africa.
A spokesman for Loyal Agro said the company took delivery of 5,000 tons of flour and the rest of the ship's cargo went to Tartus, Syria. Syriamar didn't respond to emails to its headquarters in Latakia, Syria. A call to the phone number on the company's website went unanswered.Another company involved in smuggling grain is United Shipbuilding Corp., a Russian state-owned defence contractor that builds warships and submarines for Russia's navy. In April, the company and its senior executives were sanctioned by the United States for providing weapons to the Russian war effort.
It turned south toward the Mediterranean and arrived on June 25 in Drtyol, Turkey where exclusive video obtained by AP shows it two days later at a pier owned by MMK Metalurji, a steel producer. Cranes at the dock can be seen scooping up large bucket loads of grain and dropping it into waiting trucks that drive away.
Rashnikov, who has a personal fortune estimated at more than $10 billion, appears to have anticipated the sanctions. The high prices haven't helped Ukrainian farmers in the occupied regions, who have been forced to sell their harvests to Russian-controlled companies for half of what they would have been paid before the war, according to Fedorov, the Melitopol mayor. If a farmer refuses, he said, the Russians just take the grain anyway, paying nothing.
Daniel, the former naval officer whose company tracks ships globally, said ship-to-ship transfers of cargo at sea are rare, and are usually tied to smuggling. "When you're a sanctioned country, you have a much more limited market," he said. "So if you don't blend your cargoes or if you don't hide your origin, you probably have a much smaller market and therefore much lower price.
"I can say one thing," he added. "The ships exclusively work on legal transportation and do not violate international law."