Moscow’s attempt to send fuel to Cuba, a country affected by a massive energy crisis, has failed after a tanker on the sanctions list, carrying diesel, failed to reach the island in the Caribbean archipelago and spent weeks adrift in the Atlantic Ocean, according to maritime tracking data analyzed by the Russian investigative publication The Insider, reporting from exile.
The oil tanker Universal, which was carrying approximately 270,000 barrels of diesel fuel, left Russia in April bound for Cuba, but spent the last month adrift in the Sargasso Sea, about 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) northeast of the Caribbean island. Then, the tanker changed its course southward, towards Brazil, wrote The Insider, citing data from the Starboard Maritime Intelligence ship tracking service.
The ship’s destination is currently indicated as “On Command” – a maritime term indicating that it is awaiting further routing instructions or a final destination, notes the independent Russian publication The Moscow Times.
The Insider asserts that this suggests that the American authorities did not allow the tanker to head towards Cuba.
The Universal ship left the Russian port of Vistino on the Baltic Sea, in the Leningrad region, on April 6 and, according to the British newspaper The Telegraph, it was escorted through the English Channel by a Russian military convoy.
The British publication also wrote that the frigate Admiral Grigorovich, carrying Kalibr cruise missiles, of the Russian Fleet from the Black Sea, subsequently accompanied the tanker into the Atlantic.
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