St Petersburg: A Russian ship’s insurance was cancelled en route to Syria after British authorities said its cargo may be lethal, violating European Union sanctions, the insurer said.

“We were made aware of allegations that the Alaed was carrying munitions destined for Syria,” Standard Steamship Owners Protection and Indemnity Association (Europe) Ltd, a part of the Standard Club mutual insurance association, said in a statement on Tuesday. “We have already informed the ship owner that their insurance cover ceased automatically in view of the nature of the voyage.”

The MV Alaed is owned by Femco, a shipping company based on the Far East island of Sakhalin, according to Russian registration documents. The boat is currently in the Norwegian Sea and continuing on its voyage, a company official in Moscow who declined to be identified said by telephone.

The boat was loaded with Mi-25 helicopters and missiles in Russia’s exclave of Kaliningrad and is destined for the Syrian port of Tartus, the Daily Telegraph reported, citing unidentified UK security officials who were alerted to the shipment by counterparts in the US. Satellite data compiled by Bloomberg showed the Alaed off the northwestern coat of Scotland at 2pm Moscow time on Tuesday.

Without insurance, a vessel can continue to travel, though it won’t be able load or unload any cargo at any commercial port, said Alexei Bezborodov, director of Infranews, a Russian transport and logistics research group. Russia maintains a naval base near Tartus, it’s only one outside the former Soviet Union.

 

EU ban

The EU last year imposed a ban on “arms and equipment that may be used for internal repression” in Syria, according to the bloc’s website. More than 10,000 people have died in Syria since an uprising against President Bashar Al Assad’s government began 15 months ago. While US President Barack Obama has called for Al Assad to step aside, Russia has blocked UN Security Council resolutions against his regime and accused the US and its allies of trying to duplicate the armed overthrow of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi.

Tensions between the US and Russia flared last week when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accused Russia of stoking the violence in Syria by delivering weapons and attack helicopters to Al Assad’s forces. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov retorted that, unlike the US, the Russians “aren’t shipping to Syria or anywhere else things that can be used against peaceful demonstrators.”

 

Billionaire Lisin

The Foreign Ministry in Moscow said on June 15 that while Russia had carried out repairs on helicopters it sold to Syria during the Soviet era, there are “no new deliveries.”

Vyacheslav Davidenko, a spokesman for Russian state arms exporter Rosoboronexport, declined to comment on the Alaed immediately when Bloomberg called, as did the Defence Ministry’s press service in Moscow and UK Treasury spokesman Adam Bahadoor in London.

A boat owned by billionaire Vladimir Lisin’s North-Western Shipping Co, based in St Petersburg, delivered weapons to Tartus last month, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter.

Lisin issued a statement on June 16 saying an internal investigation had uncovered no evidence that the boat in question, the Professor Katsman, unloaded anything but electrical equipment and rotor blades in Tartus.