Between 4 and 9 May a wave of drones of the rapid support forces, which fight a frightening civil war against the government army in Sudan, has hardly hit the coastal city of Port Sudan. The infrastructures were destroyed or heavily damaged by evaporating the Moscow plan to open a naval base on the Red Sea. An alternative to the partial loss of the historic tartus port caused by the collapse of the Syrian regime of Assad. The Russian fleet, after the bombing of Port Sudan, returns to focus on Eastern Libya for a new outlet on the Mediterranean.
This is the tip of the iceberg of a secret war on the seas, between ghost fleetsUkrainian sabotage, even in our waters, marine drones that have made the Russian ships in the Black Sea and Italy in the front line for the super technological defense of Odessa.
Russia is looking for a refuge in Cyrenaica
“The Russians are trying to open a naval support base in Derna, in Libya,” he says to Panorama The general on leave Ivan Caruso, military councilor of the Italian company for the international organization. “Satellite photos have already identified some ships in the port area.”
Tobruk and Benghazi, in Cyrenaica controlled by General Khalifa Haftar and his children, are other attractive ports for the Moscow fleet, but the times will be long. After the collapse of the Assad regime, the Russians moved from the Air Base of Khmeimim, to Syria, to that of Al Khadim, near Benghazi, large quantities of material thanks to daily flights of the gigantic transport planes Antonov An-124 and Ilyushin Il-76.
“The goal of the Kremlin is to find an alternative to the Syrian bases, which guaranteed Russia a significant military presence in the Mediterranean” observes Caruso.
Missions, submarines and transits in the Sicily channel
The first step is to consolidate the presence in Cyrenaica through the Afrika Corps, the heir of the Wagner, investing in a new military installation at the former air base of Maatan AS Sarra.
The Russian Deputy Minister of Defense, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, is the ties with Haftar and Russian requests for a naval base. The Kremlin war units have already made a stop in Tobruk, as in Algeria.
At the end of April, the Russian submarine B-265 “Krasnodar”, of the Black Sea fleet, was moored in Algiers for maintenance and fuel.
On July 14, the submarine ninational submarine, enhanced Kilo class, together with a tugboat directed towards the east, six days before, in nocturnal crossing, the Sparta merchant ship and the general Skobelev shipbed, were reported off the coast of Libya. Tartus. An Italian aerial patrol has risen in flight to monitor the convoy.
“The level of the Russian threat in the Mediterranean is unchanged,” explains a source of panorama with the stars.
The ghost fleet: oil, weapons and penalties around
The “ghost fleet” consisting of merchant ships and above all oil tankers, under false flag, which guarantee the export of Russian crude oil or weapons, escaping the sanctions, is equally insidious.
“Through the disturbing actions of the localization equipment indicate different ports or obscure the presence of the ship in certain sections” explains another source of panorama at the forefront of the sea.
On July 18, after yet another pack of sanctions of the European Union, 105 other ships were identified, especially oil tankers, for a total of 444 merchant units, which would be part of the ghost fleet, banned from the EU ports.
Russia supports the war effort with the export of crude oil, which represents a third of the federal budget (200 billion dollars).
In 2022, at the beginning of the invasion, the ghost fleet counted on more than 600 ships (400 oil tankers), but now he would overcome the thousand.
One of the latest discoveries of the private intelligence site Dallas, with a wealth of documents, concerns the Sable petrol, Panamense flag but Russian commander and crew, who transported 140 thousand tons of crude oil from Murmansk (important naval base in the north-west of Russia) to China.
The vessels of the ghost fleet “systematically deactivate the transponders, operate under flags of convenience and transfer oil between ships at night, in secret» Dallas denounces.
The Barbaros case and the embargoes around
The Cargo Barbaros ship, a flag of the truck, had loaded 115 Russian trucks in a port of the Black Sea directed towards Tobruk, in the Kingdom of Haftar. A report from Interpol alerted the European Irini mission for the control of weapons trafficking.
On May 1st the ship was affected, but the trucks, despite being for military use, were not of the type provided by the embargo on Libya.
And so Barbaros continued on his route, landing them in Cyrenaica.
In the Baltic the war is hybrid
In the Baltic Sea, the ghost fleet would be involved in the hybrid war, which caused eleven cases of submarine cables for electricity and translated data communication since 2023 since 2023.
In December the Finns stopped for sabotage La Eagle S, a oil tanker with a flag of the Cook Islands.
The accusation is to have damaged the Estink 2 electric cable between Finland and Estonia with anchor.
On May 15, the Estonian Navy tried to block the Jaguar oil tanker, suspected of being part of the ghost fleet. From Russia, a hunting su-35 took off and the same made two Portuguese planes from the NATO base of ämari in Estonia.
In the end the oil tanker was escorted by the Russians to the port of Primersk.
Ukrainian attacks on the sea: mines and drones
The secret war of Hur Mo (Ukrainian military intelligence) on the sea has increased since last December with attacks aimed at the ships of the ghost fleet or that favor the Russians.
In the night between 14 and 15 February of the magnetic mines were placed on the Seajewel chiglia, who beats Maltese flag, in Rada in Savona.
The gash was not enough for sinking, but it is a clear warning.
From January seven ships have been damaged, including three oil tankers moored in Türkiye (Seacharm, Seajewel twin), Libya (Grace Ferrum) and Savona.
All three had attracted in Russian ports to load crude oil.
“The level of attention has risen after sabotage in Italy and similar attacks on Greek owners” explains the source of Panorama. 20 percent of the ghost fleet would be attributable to Hellenic shipowners.
Two of the seven sabotage ships in recent months, Seacharm and Seajewel, are from the Anamaris company of Athens.
Ukrainian drones like Italian Mas
On 23 December the Russian Cargo Ursa Major ship was sunk in the Mediterranean. On January 23, the Kildin spy ship caught fire in front of the Syrian coast. On July 1st the oil tanker Vilamoura was hit in the Mediterranean with a million barrels of crude oil. In February the commando shed the Koala ship, the only one inserted on the black list of the ghost fleet, in the Russian port of Ust-Luca.
Since the beginning of the invasion, the Ukrainian ad hoc units have been trained by the SBS, the special bodies of the British Navy.
And the Royal Navy helped Kiev’s intelligence to hit the Russian fleet hard in the Black Sea hard with the development of deadly marine drones, which recall the Italians Mas (Sound -armed motorboat).
The Special Group 13 unit started with Magura V5 to move on to Sea Baby and Cossack Mamay. The latest evolution is the Kamikaze Magura V7 drone with 320 kilograms of explosive, 870 kilometers of autonomy, equipped with earth -air missiles.
Odessa: the future of underwater defense
«The secret war is active in all domains, not only maritime. The Russian fleet of the Black Sea has a very decreased potential thanks to the Ukrainian marine drones “explains the source with the stars,” and the same could be worth in other “closed” seas such as the Adriatic and the Mediterranean himself “.
Until February the Ukrainians sank 29 enemy war units including the Moskva flagship, centered by two Neptune Anti ship missiles.
“It means that the allied satellite information has been shared and in some cases there is staff on the field,” the source observes.
In front of Odessa you can no longer see the Russian fleet, in a semicircle on the horizon, as in 2022, and the underwater defense of the main port of the Black Sea will be set up by Fincantieri after the ceasefire.
An underwater screen extended up to 25 kilometers with avant -garde technology coordinated by artificial intelligence.
“It will be the most important and critical infrastructure in the maritime sector“Said the CEO, Pierroberto Folgiero”in which to test new generation modular protection systems with sonar, drones, radar integrated in an active and reactive ecosystem».
