When All You Can See Is Conspiracy

As you may or may not have heard, last week the Greek frigate Bouboulina (F 463) responded to an SOS by a Russian Navy repair ship, the PM 138, when the repair ship lost power during a heavy storm. The rescue by all accounts was a success, involving a tug and the frigate, the Russian ship was towed to port where repairs were made. The Russian Naval vessel has departed port and is back to sea.

As observers of such maritime incidents, we didn't think much of it, but a comment made on the excellent militaryphotos.net forum caught our attention the other day, and while it was an interesting side note, we didn't think much of it. That doesn't stop Debka though, who loves to make news from rumor, and had no trouble breaking out the black helicopters.

DEBKAfile’s military sources reveal that the Russian Amur 1 Class PM 138 naval boat, caught up in the heavy storm raging across the Middle East and Mediterranean last week, flashed a distress signal Tuesday Feb. 19. The vessel was on its way from a Syrian port to Sevastopol on the Black Sea when it was thrown off course by the high seas. A Greek Navy frigate responded to the call and escorted the PM 138 to the island of Chios.

The Russian Navy spokesmen said the ship’s crew numbered 99. It was unarmed and was heading for home port after a long stay at one of the Syrian Navy’s Mediterranean bases.

Ya well Debka's military sources are, as usual, questionable. First we note the ship was with two other auxiliary ships that deployed for the recent Admiral Kuznetsov deployment, so the ship has hardly been stalking the Israeli coast as implied. The other two ships, the tanker Iman and the fleet tug SB-36, both made a port of call in Algeria back on January 22nd.

Second we note there was a comment made on the excellent militaryphotos.net forum about 16 hours prior to the DEBKA story that questioned if this was a spy ship. We don't know whether PM 138 is a spy ship or not, but we observe that the only known open source photography of the ship since the rescue were taken off Chios island, and it is observed the Greek frigate HS Psara (F 454) (note MEKO class, different ship than the rescue ship) appears to be in the picture. Those pictures are excellent quality, but we do not see the smoking gun evidence that Debka does. Maybe you can, we leave this for the reader to decide, as the pictures can be found in the same militaryphotos.net thread.

From our POV, this looks like Debka military disinformation.