This won't be the last time: Navy reserve captain explains why ship accidents have become more frequent in Russia

This won't be the last time: a retired Navy captain explains why ship accidents have become more frequent in Russia Angela Figin

Russian ships are slowly sinking. Over the past two weeks, Russians have had several unpleasant incidents with ships.

After all, the Russian leadership has gotten carried away playing games to restore its empire and, instead of investing in the state, is spending virtually all of its income on waging war. Captain 1st rank of the Ukrainian Navy reserve Andrey Ryzhenko told Channel 24 the reason for the frequent accidents with Russian ships.

What is the reason for the tanker accidents

On December 15, two Russian tankers of the Volgoneft type were wrecked near Kerch. We are talking about the tankers Volgoneft-212 and Volgoneft-239. The waves cut the first tanker in half, which actually sank, and seriously damaged the other.

This is Soviet negligence. When basic safety standards and rules for handling equipment are neglected, Ryzhenko noted.

Both Volgoneft-class tankers are over 50 years old. They have already served their useful life, but the Russians simply have nothing to replace them with. At the same time, instead of building new ships for themselves, the Russians are now building 70,000-ton icebreakers to impress someone and take control of the Northern Sea Route.

They can't do it either technologically or, as I understand it, they lack the resources, noted the captain of the 1st rank of the Ukrainian Navy reserves.

Before the annexation of Crimea and the full-scale invasion, the Russians somehow bought critical spare parts from abroad and produced something. However, there was actually nothing Russian there except the hull. By the way, this was partly the case with military ships.

Now the Russians have no opportunity to buy spare parts, so they use this old junk. In addition, they violate the rules of use, which were written more than 50 years ago.

“They are told that such a vessel cannot go to sea with a wave height of more than 2.5 meters and an air force of more than 17 meters per second. However, they go out with parameters one and a half times greater,” Ryzhenko said.

Important! The accident with Russian tankers in the Kerch Strait has caused significant environmental consequences, fuel oil is gradually spreading eastward into the open part of the Black Sea.

What happened to the Sparta and Ursa Major ships

The Main Intelligence Directorate reported on December 23 that the Sparta cargo ship, which Russia sent to evacuate its weapons and equipment from Syria, had suffered a disaster near Portugal. Its main engine fuel line failed.

According to my information, the occupiers have repaired this vessel and it is now sailing through the Mediterranean Sea to the port of Alexandria in Egypt, – noted the captain of the 1st rank of the reserve Ukrainian Navy.

Ursa Major is the second Russian vessel that sank recently. It was transporting caps for the Russian icebreaker Lider, whose displacement is 70 thousand tons. In addition, there is information that the Russians planned to call at Tartu on this vessel, load their property and bring it to the Far East.

“Here, it is more likely some combination of circumstances, because I do not know of a single case where even on a very old vessel, due to a failure of the diesel engine, an explosion occurred and the vessel sank almost instantly,” Ryzhenko added.