Russian intelligence ship sinks after collision with freighter
ISTANBUL — A Russian naval intelligence ship sank Thursday after colliding with a merchant freighter in the Black Sea near Istanbul, the Turkish coast guard said. All 78 crew members on the Russian vessel were rescued.
The crew of the freighter, a Togo-flagged ship traveling from Romania to Jordan and carrying 8,800 sheep, was unharmed and the ship suffered slight damage to its bow, according to local media reports.
In Moscow, Russia’s Defense Ministry confirmed that the vessel, the Liman, went down after the collision tore a hole in the hull below the waterline.
Russian officials did not immediately provide any information about the Liman’s mission. The Russian state-run Sputnik news agency reported in 2016 that the Liman had been deployed in the Black Sea to monitor the joint Sea Breeze naval exercises between Ukraine and several NATO countries, including the U.S. Russian officials had complained that the joint exercises were provocative.
Turkey Prime Minister Binali Yildirim called Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to express “sadness,” Turkey’s Anadolu news agency reported.
Russia and Turkey have developed increasingly warm ties over the last year, putting aside bitter differences over the war in Syria to cooperate on brokering a political solution to the conflict. The relationship reached a low point in 2015, when Turkey shot down a Russian warplane that Ankara said had strayed over the Syrian border.
The collision occurred about 20 miles northwest of the Bosporus Strait, one of the world’s busiest waterways connecting the Black Sea to the shipping lanes leading to the Mediterranean.
The Liman is outfitted to capture signals intelligence, largely communications, using an array of Soviet and Russianmade sensors.