MOSCOW, November 14 (Sputnik) – A ship named Vladivostok sailing under the Russian flag, moored to the pier in the French city of Saint-Nazaire, appeared Friday in the Automatic Identification System (AIS), a ship-tracking system.
According to data from the Marine Traffic website, there are two pages logging ships named Vladivostok with the first one saying that a French ship, 199 meters long and 32 meters wide, is docked at Saint-Nazaire with the MMSI (Maritime Mobile Service Identity) of 227022600.
A second one with the same parameters and geolocation, only under the Russian flag, has the MMSI of 273549920.
On November 14, the deadline for the transfer of the first Mistral-class helicopter carrier to Russia expires with no comments on the exact date of the delivery made by the French side.
On November 6, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls announced that the conditions for the delivery of the Mistral carriers to Russia have not yet been met. In its turn, Moscow stated that if the contact was canceled, Paris would have to pay a large penalty. Russia also said that if anything goes wrong, Russia would be able to build its own version of the Mistral.
Russia and France signed a 1.2 billion euro ($1.5 billion) deal for the two Mistral-class ships in June 2011. Under the contract, France is to transfer the first carrier, the Vladivostok, by the end of the month. The second ship, the Sevastopol, is expected to arrive in 2015.
The deal has been in jeopardy after the West started implementing economic sanctions against Russia over the Ukrainian crisis. French President Francois Hollande threatened to suspend the deliveries of the ships in October, citing Russia’s alleged involvement in the Ukrainian conflict — a claim that Moscow has repeatedly denied.
