According to the aggressor government’s October 17 order, the “Feodosia shipyard”, controlled by the aggressor, will receive an additional 40 million rubles in addition to the 800 million previously allocated for the completion of the project SDS18 sea-diving vessel.
The occupiers have been implementing this project since 2019, and the vessel is designed to serve the aggressor’s corresponding militaristic goals.
The sister catamaran of the project SDS18, the “Igor Ilyin,” was built seven years ago at the Oka Shipyard of oligarch Vladimir Lisin, and at the current disposal of the aggressor, a number of additional funds are being transferred to the same shipyard for the construction of several vessels. The SDS18 hroject vessel “Georgy Artyukhov,” being built by the occupiers at the “More” shipyard in occupied Feodosia, is designed for operations involving “surveying the seabed and sunken objects, supporting diving and underwater technical work at depths of up to 60 meters.”
In the spring of 2025, the aggressor-controlled “media” stated that “Crimean shipbuilders were supposed to build the SDS18 project diving vessel in just a year and a half,” that is, in 2021, but “the vessel is still at the Feodosia shipyards in a medium state of readiness, with delivery promised for the fall of 2025.”
Over the past two years, the “government customer’s directorate” has unsuccessfully attempted to “recover” 725 million rubles from the “More” shipyard for delays in the construction of the “Georgy Artyukhov” vessel in the Moscow arbitration court.
Case materials indicate that the shipyard claimed that “the main reason for the construction halt was sanctions, which initially led to difficulties with equipment supplies from abroad, and then to a significant increase in the project’s cost due to rising exchange rates,” claiming that “the vessel’s construction cost increased from 710 million to 1.2 billion rubles.”
At the same time, it was claimed that “80% of the diving catamaran’s design was based on foreign components—from the ship’s crane to the main engines,” and that “the “More” shipyard was unable to pay for previously manufactured imported instruments and units, and the components ready for shipment were never delivered.”
It’s noteworthy that the shipyard told the Moscow court that “it was not possible to replace the equipment stipulated in the design with Russian or friendly equipment—it simply didn’t meet its specifications.”
However, “the missing equipment is now allegedly already being mass-produced in Russia,” but is “primarily a functional replacement; its weight and dimensions may differ significantly.”
The shipyard stated that “since the vessel’s completion prior to the sanctions was over 40%, and some equipment had already been purchased and delivered, making changes to the design was virtually impossible.”
As it follows from the aggressor’s current order, the occupiers intend to either complete the “Georgy Artyukhov” vessel at any cost, despite its obvious inconsistency with the original design, or continue to spend millions on this long-term construction project.
The “Russian Maritime Register of Shipping”, in conjunction with the “R-Flot” shipbuilding complex, is covering up these maritime security scams by “legalizing” the vessel’s non-compliance with the technical design from the “Marine Engineering Bureau”.
