We have previously described the consequences of the environmental disaster on December 15 last year, when the Russian tanker “Volgoneft-212” sank in a storm near the Kerch Strait and its sister ship “Volgoneft-239” ran aground on rocks.
We wrote that the “Volgoneft-212” from “Kama Shipping” had such “valid reasons” for the disaster as its 55-year age and “design innovations” thirty years ago, which led to the tanker simply breaking apart on the wave.
We also pointed out that the owner of the “Volgoneft-239” tanker, “Volgatransneft”, won a tender in 2017 to transport Rosneft products “in the southern direction on the territory of Russia until 2022.” At the same time, the cost of the contract for the transportation of 1.5 million tons of oil products amounted to about 3 billion rubles, and naturally, these funds were not spent on modernizing the fleet either until 2022 or later.
Earlier, we wrote that the Volgoneft-type ships that were lost and damaged by the storm, with classification documents from such an “authoritative” structure as the “Russian Classification Society” (formerly the “Russian River Register”), were, in principle, not intended for maritime shipping.
They were mercilessly exploited in conditions not intended for them due to the greed of their operators and the lack of control of the aggressor’s authorities.
Our forecast that this catastrophe, which was a direct consequence of the aggressor’s mismanagement, is only just unfolding and its consequences will obviously be long-term and irreversible, was fully justified, and therefore it is worth paying special attention to the “Volgoneft” class vessels and their role in the aggressor’s oil empire.
The “Volgoneft” type oil tankers include vessels of five projects: “550” and the similar “558”, “550A”, “1577” and “630”, they were built from 1963 to 1996 at the Volgograd Shipyard, as well as at two Bulgarian enterprises, “Ivan Dimitrov” in Ruse and “Georgi Dimitrov” in Varna.
“Volgoneft” became the most mass-produced series of small tankers, originally intended for transportation of crude oil and oil products in the USSR, primarily along the river systems of the Volga, Don, northern rivers of the European part of Russia and the canals and lakes connecting them.
This transport, despite its relatively small tonnage, allowing to take on board less than 5 thousand tons of oil products, for a long time had a strategic character for the Soviet empire, since almost the entire oil producing and oil refining industry of the European zone of Russia was “tied” to this river system.
All vessels of the “Volgoneft” project were united by a German lead engine from the East German concern “SKL” (VEB “Karl Liebknecht”) 8NVD-48AU, replaced in the last project “630” with a more powerful 8NVDS-48AU. The fact that from the very beginning the “Volgoneft” tankers were intended for inland shipping was emphasized by their control over the “Russian River Register”, where they were of the O-PR class and later M-PR.
And to this day, the absolute majority of these tankers, except for the “630” project and several vessels transferred from the Russian flag to a “convenient” ones, are controlled by the successor of the “rivermen”, the “Russian Classification Society”, the aggressor has assigned the aforementioned few exceptions to the “Russian Maritime Register of Shipping”.
These “little things” are important not only for understanding the technical condition of this group of tankers, but also in matters of insurance: this aggressor’s “river fleet” is insured, unlike the sea tankers themselves, exclusively by local companies, often “one-day firms”. In the event of a large-scale incident, these companies simply “go to the bushes” and will not compensate anyone, as it was shown by the previous similar catastrophe in the Kerch Strait in 2007.
As the aggressor’s sources admit, over the first thirty years of operation of the “Volgoneft” group of ships, more than a thousand crew members died on them. However, quite a few tankers of this type were built for the Soviet empire; by counting from open sources, we established the fate of 207 ships of this type.
As of 2024, at least 53 of the 71 built Project “1557” vessels, 51 of the 65 Project “550A” tankers, 13 of the 25 Project “550” vessels, 13 of the 36 Project “558” tankers and all nine tankers of the “youngest” Project “630” physically exist.
The absolute, if not complete majority of them are owned by Russian beneficiaries, and with extremely rare exceptions, they are still listed under the Russian flag, which is not typical for “larger tanker breeds”.
However, in real operation, the aggressor has significantly fewer vessels of this type: in addition to extreme decrepitude, the obvious problem for Russian owners is the replacement or repair of the main engine.
Therefore, out of 13 “surviving” Project “550” vessels, 7 were used for their intended purpose in 2024, and all of them were on the aggressor’s river routes as of January of this year; some of the tankers, which were not in operation, were used by the aggressor as all sorts of barges and storage facilities.
Similarly, among the 13 Project “558” tankers, 4 vessels were noted to be in operation, also on Russian rivers; the rest are used by their owners as a “non-self-propelled bunker base”, “non-self-propelled oil pumping station” or “bunkering capacity”.
The slightly newer Project “550A”, most of whose vessels were built in the 1970s, can “boast” of 32 tankers in operation, with 25 of them on Russian rivers at the beginning of 2025, and another seven in that same ill-fated Azov shipping, from Rostov and Azov to Temryuk and Port Kavkaz.
These are tankers with Astrakhan registration of various ship owners, “Volgoneft-105” IMO number 8727915, “Volgoneft-109” IMO 8230651, “Volgoneft-111” IMO 8230663, “Volgoneft-134” IMO 8936891, “Volgoneft-141” IMO 8863020, “Volgoneft-150” IMO 8866046 and “Volgoneft-152” IMO 8898623, and only the last two were built after 1980.
At the same time, 4 vessels of this project have simply “not gotten out” of downtime and repairs for the last 5 years, and among those that “ran aground”, 3 tankers ended their careers in 2022, and another 2 in 2023, one is undergoing “modernization” and another is in “cold layup”
Probably, the most “saturated” biographies are those of the tankers of the ill-fated project “1557”, to which the two tankers that sank on December 15 belonged, reducing the “total count” to 53 vessels, which also include all kinds of “oil pumping stations”.
A total of 27 vessels of this project entered service in 2025, with 3 “dropped out” in 2023, another 4 in 2022, two tankers are “laid up” in the Arctic, one has been converted into a dry cargo ship and another is “awaiting conversion”.
Also, three tankers of this type, detained in different ports, are not included in the operational list: the “Mechanic Chebotarev”, arrested in 2015 in Libyan Misurata, and the “Naviger-2”, under the Palau flag, and the “Volgoneft-268”, under the Cameroon flag, detained after the start of large-scale aggression in Ukrainian ports.
Of the 27 “running” tankers of the “1557” project, at least one was shortened by 25 meters to “upgrade”, and another 5 were “put into operation” after long periods of downtime. For example, the operating Astrakhan “Volgoneft-214”, built in 1969, had previously been idle for 4 years in a row.
As of January 2025, 24 “running” tankers “1557” are recorded on Russian rivers, also “Volgoneft-256” number IMO 8231071 is seen in the Caspian Sea, and “Volgoneft-267” number IMO 8230950 in the Sea of Azov. One tanker of this type, “Atlantic Wave 1” number IMO 8230912, with Russian registry documents but under the flag of Nigeria, is in the Lagos roadstead.
Well, tankers of the “630” project are scattered quite widely: three met the New Year on Russian rivers, one on the White Sea, “Naviger-5” IMO 8727939 under the flag of Sierra Leone, but with Russian registry documents, passed from the Bosphorus to the Sea of Azov.
“Astrakhan City” IMO number 9080156 was in the Caspian Sea, and three more tankers, “Kapitan Pshenitsyn” IMO number 8727941, “Kapitan Shchemilkin” IMO number 8727965 and “Kazan City” IMO number 9104782 were between Turkey and the Russian-controlled ports of the Azov Sea.
Thus, in 2025, the aggressor can continue to exploit up to 80 “surviving” “Volgonefts” for the purposes of its oil complex, of which at least 15-20 will be actively used by the Russian invaders in Azov-Black Sea shipping.
The paradox of the situation is that the Russian economy simply has nothing to replace this morally and physically worn-out fleet with. This happened not so much because of sanctions, but because since the early 90s in the Russian Federation no one has paid attention to the issue of updating the tanker fleet of “low power”, intended not only for export, but also for supplying the aggressor’s economy, including its military machine.
Today, Russian factories themselves will not build 80 new “five-thousander tankers” in a year, or in five, or in ten years, even if we imagine that in the Russian Federation they “suddenly learned” to make normal marine engines. However, “Volgoneft” will clearly not disappear in a year, the speed of their “extinction” can be predicted at 5-7 units per year.
And therefore, further risks to the ecology and safety of shipping here are predetermined by the very “vital needs” of the Russian oil sector, which is clearly not going to refuse the Volgoneft tankers.
The main executors of this criminal policy of “shifting costs” onto the environment are the same “Russian Classification Society”, the beneficiaries of ship-owning and “insurance” companies, as well as the highest port bigwigs of the Russian Federation.
And therefore, it is not surprising that the “search for those responsible” for the current catastrophe among the aggressor’s punishers quickly ended at the “high level” of the captains of the sunken ships: in this case, as is widely known, “the main thing is not to get to ourselves”.
Prof. Borys Babin
