After three days in Algeria, a sanctioned Russian ship passes near Morocco

The Ascalon left the Algerian port of Oran on August 22 at 9:46 a.m., according to AIS data published by VesselFinder. The 126-meter-long roll-on/roll-off ship, flying the Russian flag, had docked on August 19, after passing through the Strait of Gibraltar the previous day toward the Mediterranean.

The vessel reversed course on Sunday, August 23. It crossed the strait westward, in front of the Bay of Algeciras, and then continued on its route into the Atlantic. This passage brought it close to northern Morocco.

On Bladi.net : Russian tanker stranded in Tangier: the last-chance operation to avoid an oil spill

The destination displayed by the ship’s transponder remains unclear: “To order,” meaning a destination to be determined. Its last confirmed stop is therefore Oran, but the navigation data provide no information about the nature of its cargo or the operations carried out during its three days in the Algerian port.

The Ascalon has been listed since May 8, 2022, among the individuals, companies and vessels sanctioned by the Office of Foreign Assets Control. The official U.S. Treasury register precisely identifies the ship by its IMO number 9198226 and links it to the Russian company M Leasing LLC, which is itself targeted by the U.S. sanctions adopted against Russia.

A military past, but an unknown cargo

For its part, Ukrainian military intelligence classifies the Ascalon as a vessel assigned to transporting military cargo. In a profile devoted to the vessel, Kyiv claims that it took part in the “Syrian Express,” a logistics chain used to transport equipment from Russian Black Sea ports to Syria.

The same Ukrainian source maintains that the Ascalon was observed by satellite at the Russian naval base of Novorossiysk and that in 2018 it transported missiles intended for S-400 air-defense systems to China. These claims describe the ship’s previous activities, but do not make it possible to determine what it was carrying during its latest stopover in Algeria.

On Bladi.net : article 120519

The August passage was not, moreover, its first recent visit to Oran. Maritime Optima’s AIS history records a previous stopover from May 28 to 30, 2026. The Ascalon therefore stopped twice at the Algerian port in less than three months.