Late January 2025, russian reconnaissance ship Kildin got caught in an incident off the coast of Syria, revealed just recently. As reported, a fire broke out on this ship and lasted four hours, most likely in the engine compartment.
Noteworthy, as the russian crew evidently lost control over the situation, NATO countries offered their assistance but Kildin's captain did not accept it, instead he simply reported the problem.
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AP report: The Russian medium spy ship Kildin burned for several hours off the coast of Syria about two weeks ago. The incident occurred on January 23, and although the ship received an offer of assistance from a NATO vessel, it declined, apparently due to the sensitivity of the… pic.twitter.com/SyFSrBARAT — world history (@worldhistoryera) February 7, 2025
At first glance, there is hardly anything extraordinary in this episode, after all, the russian navy is notorious for its aged equipment and neglect of safety guidelines; it also has little to do with any combat casualties since the incident took place far away from the raging war between russia and Ukraine.
However, there's depth to this case. For starters, we need to ask the question of what was the military vessel doing there in the first place and where it came from. Under ordinary circumstances, this Keldin reconnaissance ship formally belongs to the 519th Separate Reconnaissance Ship Division of the russian Black Sea Fleet, and its permanent deployment base is in the russian-occupied city of Sevastopol in Crimea.
One possibility is that Keldin had left Sevastopol for missions near Syria and passed through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits. However, you can also find reports in russian state media stating the ship had entered a port in Algeria in the summer of 2022 as part of an "operational group of the russian navy in the Mediterranean Sea".
That is, Keldin was among those ships from the Black Sea Fleet that got stuck in the Mediterranean at the onset of russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Turkiye's decision to block the straits for any military vessels rendered Keldin and the rest of the fleet unable to return to Crimea, and therefore cut off from their main operating base.
Under scope, the Keldin itself is a Soviet-made Project 861M-class warship, built at shipyards in Poland back in the 1970s. Another representative of the class is the unfortunate Liman reconnaissance ship which sank in the Mediterranean Sea in April 2017 after colliding with a livestock carrier.
While the role of Project 861M vessels is openly stated, the reconnaissance equipment they utilize remains unknown. So it's difficult to say what it was observing in the Mediterranean region as part of the flotilla. Only the general specifications of Project 861M ships are publicly available: total water displacement is 1,560 tons, the hull is 73.3 meters long and 11.2 meters wide, the crew consists of 85 people, and its operational range is 9,700 miles at a cruising speed of 11 knots.
Still, one aspect about this situation sounds surprising: taking into account the geographical factor, the Mediterranean Sea is widely regarded as NATO's "soft underbelly," yet for some reason, the Alliance still tolerates the presence of russian spy ships in such an important region, even though their specific capabilities are obscure.
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