The bulk carrier PANORMITIS (IMO: 9445021), carrying grain taken from the occupied territories of Ukraine, is approaching the Israeli port of Haifa, according to Kateryna Yaresko, a journalist with the investigative project SeaKrime at Ukraine’s Myrotvorets Center. On board are 6,201.56 metric tons of wheat and 19,043.73 metric tons of barley.
Investigators have been able to partially document the origin of the cargo, Yaresko said. The vessel LEONID PESTRIKOV (IMO: 9922122) loaded 954.56 tons of wheat and 6,087.68 tons of barley in occupied Berdiansk between April 7 and 15, and on April 18 it transshipped the grain onto PANORMITIS at an anchorage near the Russian port of Temryuk. The cargo documents were issued in a Russian port, which LEONID PESTRIKOV had entered with a full hold before the transshipment.
This scheme is a deliberate choice: Berdiansk has no customs post, and reprocessing through Temryuk makes it possible to conceal the actual port of loading. The exporter is the company Petrokhleb-Kuban, which, according to SeaKrime, is regularly involved in exporting grain from the occupied territories.
PANORMITIS was anchored in Russian territorial waters and did not formally cross Ukraine’s state border, Yaresko writes. The violations were committed by the vessels that delivered the grain to it.
According to data from vessel-tracking service Starboard Maritime Intelligence that was reviewed by The Insider, anomalies appear in PANORMITIS’s track between April 5 and 20. Sections of the route show the AIS signal disappearing or reporting unreliable coordinates: track lines run across land while the vessel is shown moving at non-zero speed — typical signs of signal jamming or spoofing. The anomalies coincide with periods when the track indicates movement between Russian ports and Feodosiia in occupied Crimea, transit in the Kerch Strait, and activity near the Russian-occupied Azov port city of Berdiansk.
This is the second consecutive voyage of this kind to Haifa. The previous one involved the vessel ABINSK (IMO: 9303869) — at that time, Israel refused Ukraine’s request for international legal assistance. According to SeaKrime, this points to a systemic nature of the problem.
Criminal proceedings have been launched in Ukraine over the export of grain from the occupied territories.
