On March 31, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the U.S. Department of the Treasury lifted sanctions on the Russian container ships “Fesco Moneron” and “Fesco Magadan”, as well as the cargo vessel “Sv. Nikolay”, all of which currently sail under the Russian flag. The reasons for the lifting of these sanctions have not been disclosed.
Sanctions were originally imposed by the U.S. in April 2022 on the bulk carrier “Sv. Nikolay”, IMO number 9482926, a vessel with a tonnage of nearly 5,900 tons.
These sanctions were levied due to the vessel’s ties to the sanctioned entity “Alfa-Leasing” LLC, a subsidiary of “Alfa-Bank” JSC, and for its involvement in illicit operations within the occupied territories of Ukraine.
The bulk carrier “Sv. Nikolay” has been implicated in unlawful port calls to Port Krym, as well as to occupied Mariupol, and to ports in Algeria and Turkey, such as Samsun; the vessel has been used to transport grain and coking coal. Ukraine added the vessel to its own sanctions lists in late 2025.
The vessel is owned and operated by “Riversy Plus”, a firm based in Yeysk registered in the name of Sergey Litvinenko.
Previously, the company was owned by Yevgeny Sidyukov, an agricultural sector entrepreneur from Krasnodar and the brother of Alexey Sidyukov, a deputy in the Legislative Assembly of Krasnodar Krai representing the “United Russia” party.
We have previously reported on this vessel’s transport of a cargo of coking coal from Mariupol in August 2025.
Notably, the vessel’s insurer at the time was the Moscow-based company “Sogaz”. Furthermore, a particularly convoluted saga unfolded regarding the vessel’s Russian classification status: that vessel, prior to 2020, had sailed under the Maltese flag as the “St. Nicolas”. According to various sources, the “St. Nicolas”, much like the “Sv. Nikolay” later on, operated under classification documents issued by the “Russian Maritime Register of Shipping”, “RMRS”; however, all data regarding the vessel has now vanished from the “RMRS” website.
Concurrently, starting in 2024, the “Sv. Nikolay”, registered in the port of Taganrog, began presenting classification documents from the “Russian Classification Society”, formerly known as the “Russian River Register”.
Experts have also noted that the “Sv. Nikolay” transported coking coal from Mariupol to Algeria; according to documentation, this cargo belonged to “Green Rabbit Ltd”, a company registered in Hong Kong. It is alleged that this firm is headed by Muslim Temerkayev, an advisor to Marat Kabaev, the father of the notorious Alina Kabaeva.
Temerkayev works for Kabaev at the “International Assembly of Islamic Business”; furthermore, we have previously reported on the ties connecting the Kabaev family to the current “Simferopol prisoner”, the Crimean Tatar collaborator Ruslan Balbek.
Thus, the saga of the “Sv. Nikolay” serves as yet another example of fraudulent schemes involving classification documents and flag-hopping maneuvers employed by the aggressor state, a saga that is clearly far from over.
