A Chinese cargo ship has visited the Russian-occupied port of Sevastopol in Crimea — making an unprecedented series of stops by a major foreign vessel to one of the Ukrainian ports seized by Russia.
The use of Sevastopol has been barred by western sanctions since 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea. Allies of Kyiv have sought to prevent Moscow from exploiting the occupied regions and third parties from treating the territories as part of Russia.
While China has not adopted the western sanctions regime against Russia, its commercial ships have previously avoided Russian-held ports.
The Heng Yang 9 — a Panama-flagged ship that is owned and operated by the Guangxi Changhai Shipping Company, based in Guangxi — has been spotted docking in Crimea at least three times in the past few months, according to Ukrainian officials.
The Financial Times has been able to independently verify the most recent of these trips in September using optical satellite imagery, radar imagery, transponder data and conventional photographs.
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The Heng Yang 9 made at least two visits to Sevastopol this summer, according to the office of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The container ship was in the port from June 19 to June 22 — its first stay in Sevastopol, the president’s office told the FT. According to Ukrainian officials, the vessel also requested entry to load 101 containers on August 15.
After those previous alleged calls to the Crimean port, it called at ports in Turkey before travelling to Alexandria in Egypt.
“Ukraine has made it clear that such actions are unacceptable and expects all international partners and companies to strictly avoid contacts with the occupied territories,” Vladyslav Vlasiuk, the Ukrainian president’s commissioner for sanctions policy [said].
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During the two-week voyage in the Black Sea in September, the vessel appears to have falsified its tracks, using its transponder to report false positions and disguise its movements. The vessel appears to have sailed to Novorossiysk, a Russian port on the east side of the Black Sea where it was caught on a satellite image on September 6.
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However, a European Space Agency Sentinel-1 satellite took radar images of the port on September 9 just 10 minutes after the vessel reported its position in the harbour. No ship was at the reported location.
Similarly, the ship was passed by two Sentinel-2 satellites, which take optical photographs, on September 11 and 15. In both cases, the passes came within an hour of the vessel reporting a position. There was no vessel present in the location where its transmissions implied it should be.
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