Alwaght- Reports are merging suggesting that Turkey sabotaged a Russian intelligence gathering warship after it sank mysteriously Turkey's Black Sea coast.
According to rbth website, Turkish divers could have found secret reconnaissance equipment and encryption codes on board The Liman after it mysteriously plummeted towards the sea bed in Turkish waters.
On April 27, the Russian Navy ship called “The Liman” collided with the Ashot-7 cargo vessel 40 km from the Bosphorus Strait. Russia’s Defense Ministry reports that the civilian vessel breached the right side of The Liman and it sank rapidly. All 78 crewmembers were saved by a nearby Turkish ship.
The Liman is a middle-sized reconnaissance ship and, in Litovkin's words, its function is to intercept radio and telephone conversations, as well as information from foreign satellites.
A military analyst from the Izvestia daily Dmitry Litovkin said event if there was heavy fog at the time of the accident, this doesn’t justify the sailor's actions. "During fog, when a ship enters the Strait it must have a reinforced watch. Sailors with machine guns must stand on deck protecting the vessel from saboteurs and the captain must be sitting in the wheelhouse, personally following the geo-locators, which show the surrounding vessels," he said.
"Secret Russian equipment was located on the deck and in the first hour after the incident it could have been taken by Turkish divers," notes the expert.
For the last year and a half the ship had been participating in the Russian campaign in Syria. It observed the movements of ISIS terrorists and listened in on their communications in the Mediterranean Sea.
In Litovkin's words, this time the ship was also heading for the Syrian coast for a combat mission. It will now be replaced by one of the seven equivalent-class ships from the Black Sea Fleet.
According to the Defense Ministry, ‘the Liman’ collided with another ship, ‘Ashot-7,’ about 40km northwest from the Bosporus Strait.
Media identified the other ship involved in the collision as the Togo-flagged livestock carrier ‘Youzarsif H.’
