According to the U.S. Fifth Fleet, on Thursday 9 January a Russian Navy ship said to “aggressively” approach a US Navy destroyer vessel, while it was doing its daily operations in the Arabian Sea. As CNN reported, the Russian vessel kept ignoring the warnings from the US destroyer, increasing the risk of collision.
The Presidents of Russia and Turkey officially launched the TurkStream gas pipeline in a ceremony that took place on 8 January, in Istanbul. TurkStream, laying 930 km in the Black Sea, is a link between the gas transmission systems of Russia and Turkey.
The National Defence Authorisation Act for Fiscal Year 2020 (NDAA 2020) was signed by President Trump on December 2019, and includes several sanction-related measures mostly targeting specific European energy programmes in which Russia participates in.
Russian and Ukrainian companies signed a final five-year deal safeguarding Russian gas transit to Europe via Ukraine. This came just 24 hours before the current agreement expires on Tuesday. The deal was signed after five days of talks.
Although the widespread environmental and safety concerns, the Russia’s floating nuclear power plant officially started to supply electricity to a remote port in Siberia. Specifically, the state nuclear corporation Rosatom announced that the electricity production begun on Thursday 19 December.
As Reuters reports, VEB, the Russian State Development Bank, provided to Rosneft-led Zvezda shipyard first tranche worth $66 million for the construction of the first Arc7 gas tanker for Novatek’s Arctic LNG 2 project.
Compliance is a major concern in light of the new regulations concerning pollution from shipping; whatsoever, no central policing agency as well as several countries have not signed up to them yet. Reuters reports that refiners and shipping companies are expected to spend billions of dollars in the following years in order to ensure fuel and engine compliance. Yet, as enforcement of MARPOL Annex VI, set by the UN rests with individual countries and flag states, means that for some routes and regions, compliance may be inconsistent.
USCG Sector Charleston informed of a Russian spy ship operating in an unsafe manner off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia. In a bulletin dated 16 December, the USCG revealed reports that the RFN Viktor Leonov (AGI-175) was neither energizing running lights nor responding to hails by commercial vessels.
Russia’s largest and most powerful nuclear-powered icebreaker returned from its stage one of sea trials prior to its planned delivery in May 2020. Namely, Arktika, which is still under construction at Russia’s Baltic Shipyard in St. Petersburg, departed St. Petersburg on December to the Gulf of Finland, returning two days later after completing testing of the ship’s generators, navigation and communications systems.
Russia’s only aircraft carrier, Admiral Kuznetsov, was caught on fire on Thursday, December 12, during work in Russia’s Arctic Sea port of Murmansk. Reuters now reports that least one military serviceman was killed and other 12 people were injured.
