The voyage of the sanctioned Russian cargo ship that the US alleges South Africa was secretly using to deliver weapons to Russia began from the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk on a fine October afternoon last year..

Halfway through an epic journey around Africa that lasted until February 2023, the Ledy R made a mysterious stop. In December, it docked at the Cape Town naval base, where the US claims South Africa loaded the ship with weapons and ammunition, sparking a diplomatic crisis..

The Financial Times has reconstructed the Ledy R route using Spire Global data showing no signals from the ship's transponder on critical dates in Cape Town.. This means that the vessel has turned off the device that allows you to track its location..

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The vessel Lady R departed from Novorossiysk on October 3, 2022. It later berths at Alexandria in Egypt before crossing the Mediterranean and passing through the Strait of Gibraltar on 19 October..

The ship continued its journey along the coast of West Africa, after which, in early November, it called at the ports of Lome in Togo and Douala in Cameroon.. From there, he circled the Cape of Good Hope, after which, according to Spire Global data, the transponder signals disappeared for four days.. So the crew turned off their on-board tracking device..

“Despite the apparent transponder hoax, residents living around the historic Simon’s Town Naval Base near Cape Town saw Lady R on December 7 at a high-security facility.. Late on the night of December 8, according to South African media reports, the ship unloaded and loaded under the cover of darkness,” writes the Financial Times..

After that, the ship continued its journey, stopping at the port of Beira in Mozambique and Port Sudan in Sudan.. It then passed through the Suez Canal before returning to Novorossiysk on 23 February 2023..

Financial Times writes that Lady R is now heading south through the Suez Canal. The ship is anchored in the Great Bitter Lake. Its declared destination is the Chinese port of Zhanjiang..

Recall that on May 11, the United States Ambassador to South Africa, Ruben Bridgety, said that he was sure that the Russian ship loaded weapons in South Africa, which, perhaps, " The ship departed for Russia from South Africa in December 2022.

The United States has repeatedly warned other countries against supporting Russia in the past, warning that those who do so could be denied access to the world's most important markets..

In February 2023, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said that South Africa was likely to be slowly moving away from rapprochement with Moscow.. Later in South Africa, they asked Vladimir Putin not to come to the BRICS summit, because they would be forced to arrest him on the basis of a warrant from the International Criminal Court.