GEORGIY AGAFONOV

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Russia supplies Syria mission with old cargo ships bought from Turkey

(Reuters) - Earlier this year, an old refrigerator ship called the Georgiy Agafonov, built to transport fruit and vegetables for the Soviet Union, was quietly gathering rust in the Ukrainian port of Izmail where the Danube flows into the Black Sea. Its owners, a Ukrainian state company, assumed it would never sail again. When a Turkish company offered to buy it for $300,000, they watched as the hulk was towed away, presumably for scrap. Nine months later the ship is back at sea, renamed Kazan-60, reflagged as part of Russia's naval auxiliary fleet, and repurposed as an unlikely part of Moscow's biggest military operation outside the old Soviet boundaries since the Cold War. "It had not been used as a vessel for many years," said Dmitri Barinov, board chairman of Ukraine's Danube Shipping Company, surprised that the ship, which his company sold to Turkish firm 2 E Denizcilik, was sailing again. Photos of the ship, now flying the Russian flag, have appeared on blogs of Russian military enthusiasts. Barinov confirmed they look like the ship his company sold nine months ago. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/reuters/article-3361264/Russia-supplies-Syria-mission-old-cargo-ships-bought-Turkey.html#ixzz3uTL47ZRy