Bloomberg: Russia Removes Equipment Of WWII Era From U.S. Sunken Vessels

• 1.03.2023, 13:35

It has been doing so for decades.

For almost a decade, the Russian navy has been visiting World War II-era shipwrecks, removing military equipment in what some argue is a violation of international law, restoring it and displaying it in military parades and museums, Bloomberg reports with a reference to satellite imagery.

The haul included six to 10 tanks taken from two US cargo ships, the SS Thomas Donaldson and SS Ballot, Sherman and M3 Lee tanks, guns and an entire train. Military analyst Sutton noted that the latest “salvage operation” carried out in October 2022 involved the KIL-143 crane vessel.

The Russian navy took the equipment from the ships that traveled between the UK and US and the former Soviet Union in the early 1940s to deliver essential supplies under a land-lease. The ships in question were civilian vessels engaged in military service, not warships, but the team at MAST says they should be treated as war graves.

“These are shared heritage war graves. People died in the shared pursuit of defeating fascism. So you should leave them alone,” says Giles Richardson, senior archaeologist at the Maritime Archaeology Sea Trust (MAST).

The activity is being carried out without the permission of the US government, which still owns the vessels. Ian McConnaughey, spokesman for the US Naval History and Heritage Command, says doing so violates US and international laws requiring authorization to excavate or break up state-owned shipwrecks.

There is a law, enacted by the US in October 2004, that protects all US sunken military craft, while also affording protections to foreign sunken military craft that lie within US waters. According to McConnaughey, about the time the law was passed, the Russian government said in a statement that, under the international law of the sea, “all the sunken warships and government aircraft remain the property of their flag State.”