Kazan-60

The ship was commissioned by the Danube Shipping Company MMF USSR was built in Austria in 1986-1988. in the shipyards Osterreichische Schiffswerften AG Linz-Korneuburg. In Soviet times, the ship "George Agafonov" was supposed to transport vegetables and fruits from Bulgaria to the USSR ^[2] . Due to precipitation, he could not work on the Danube and sailed the Black Sea ^[3] The ship has one deck and two screws.

After the collapse of the USSR, the ship received the Ukrainian Danube Shipping Company (under the IMO identification number: 8805494, MMSI: 272892000). The home port of the ship was Ishmael . In 2013, a paper was received stating that the watercraft was declared unfit for use and the following year permission was granted for sale ^[2] .

On February 5, 2015, the ship was expelled from the State Ship Registry of Ukraine. March 19, 2015, he left the territory of Ukraine ^[2] . Then, according to a report by the Stockholm International Institute for Peace Studies, it was stated in 2015 that the ship was sold through land Mongolia (almost a thousand kilometers ^[4] ) to the nearest sea, renamed Geo (MMSI: 457284000) ^{[5] [6 ]} to the Russian Federation ^{[7] [3]} . From 17 ^[8] October 2015 the ship was in Novorossiysk , and after one week - already in Sevastopol under the flag of auxiliary vessels of the Russian Navy ^[9] . Presumably between the Ukrainian and Mongolian side was Turkey . “Agafonov” - “Kazan” up to the 20th of October 2015 retained the unique IMO number, changing only the maritime mobile service identifier (MMSI) and call sign ^[8] .

The Russian Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies noted that the transfer of the ship under the Mongolian flag was associated with the use of a “semi-efficient company“ gaskets ”to buy a vessel in the interests of the Russian Navy for use on the“ Syrian line ”, and according to the center it is not the only the ship that Russia acquired from Ukraine ^[10] .