Over the past few days, the occupation “press” has been actively broadcasting a statement by the so-called “deputy head of the administration” of the Gagra district of Russian-occupied Abkhazia, Adamur Tsishba, that a “direct sea link” could be launched between Gagra and Yalta using a high-speed ship of the “Kometa 120M” project.
Tsishba made this statement at the “signing of a twinning agreement” between Gagra and Yalta at the aggressor’s latest propaganda “forum” in Moscow, but immediately added the caveat that launching the service in 2026 was “not technically feasible” and that “the project is still under discussion.”
We have previously written repeatedly about the aggressor’s scams involving “Kometas” and about Russian attempts to establish a connection between Sochi, Yalta, and Sevastopol using them.
As of 2022, all these propaganda projects, which made no economic sense and did not meet maritime safety requirements, had become history. Later, the aging Russian spy Georgiy Muradov promised an “Abkhazian direction” for the use of the “Kometas”, and it’s clear that Tsishba has now voiced that very same methodology.
As of the end of 2025, the “Kometas” were controlled by the Moscow-based company “Sea High-Speed Passenger Transportation,” a subsidiary of the Rybinsk shipyard “Vympel,” as well as by the company “Vodohod Express.”
Four “Kometas” were declared to be owned by “Mashpromleasing,” representing the aggressor’s “United Shipbuilding Corporation.”
Moreover, four vessels in this series, the “Sevastopol”, the “Kosmonavt Pavel Popovich” (formerly the “Kerch”), the “Yevpatoria”, and the “Yalta”, are listed in the “Russian Maritime Register of Shipping”, with their home port in Tuapse. However, “for some reason”, they have not been assigned IMO numbers. The fifth vessel, the “Feodosia”, is not listed in the aggressor’s public maritime registers at all.
Previously, the occupiers claimed that the “Sevastopol” allegedly had a German lead engine, and that subsequent vessels in this series were allegedly equipped with “Chinese and Russian equivalents” as part of “import substitution.”
However, the “Russian Maritime Register” now lists the “Sevastopol” as equipped with 16V2000M72 engines from the German “Rolls-Royce Solutions GmbH”, built in 2015.
The “Yalta”, “Kosmonavt Pavel Popovich”, and “Yevpatoria” ships are listed as equipped with German “MAN Truck & Bus SE” D2862LE483 engines, built in 2018 and 2020, respectively.
In 2025, the aforementioned Moscow firm laundered two million rubles through the purchase of genuine spare parts for these D2862LE483 engines through a Latvian shell company.
In 2024, the “Kometas” were used on routes from Novorossiysk and Anapa to Sochi; since 2025, the occupiers have established a route on them. Sochi-Sukhumi, once a week, where the “Kosmonavt Pavel Popovich” operated.
Meanwhile, Gagra itself has no port; there’s a pier and a dilapidated seaport 5 kilometers from the city. The last time the Russians to organize sea passenger service from Sochi was in 2011.
Therefore, in some real future, the aggressor’s “Kometa” ships will not sail to occupied Crimea, but the supply of German engines and spare parts for them should be legally assessed as a clear violation of the sanctions regime.
