Sunday, March 23, was a lovely, warm day in Istanbul, the air lit with a bright, late-March sun. Thousands of people enjoyed the day on the boardwalk along the shore of the Bosporus, on the western side of the city.
This writer was there as well, sitting in a fish restaurant teeming with families. The atmosphere was pastoral, seagulls hovered overhead and the crowding cars that normally pack the area seemed less numerous than usual. A feeling of warm-weather vacationing was in the afternoon air and the parts of the boardwalk that met the water line were filled with families.
All of a sudden the pastoral atmosphere was disturbed by the loud sound of super-powerful motors. The restaurant’s windows overlooking the Bosporus shook as a gigantic rusty gray ship, with artillery and a Russian name, came into view, hiding the opposite shore. The vessel was sailing rapidly southward, leaving a trail of foam in its wake. It was a Ropucha-1 large landing craft named Minsk and numbered 127. Its companion, the Olenegorsky Goniak, numbered 012, came into view three minutes later and Kalingrad, numbered 102, followed three minutes after that. Some of the people at the shore gazed at the ships with astonishment, sensing that something special was happening before their eyes, while others paid it no attention.
Minsk- 127 Dr. M. Kedar
Olenegorsky Gorniak 012 Dr. M. Kedar
Kalingrad 102 Dr. M. Kedar
According to the facts that are known about these landing craft, they can carry a 450 ton cargo which may, in addition to soldiers and their personal weapons, include tanks, personnel carriers or any other equipment, armaments and spare parts. The most important detail for us to know is that the cargo can be in the ship’s hold, not visible to observers stationed on the mountains overlooking the Bosporus or to flight cameras trying to detect its content. Each ship has two 2.244 inch diameter cannon, one in the bow and one in the stern, where there are also two doors for loading and unloading. The Soviet navy purchased 28 of these ships between the years 1975 and 1991.
It should be noted that in August 2012, three landing craft of this type reached the Syrian port of Tartus, apparently bringing armaments to Assad’s forces, which, a year and a half earlier, in March 2011, had begun shooting at anti-Assad demonstrators and kept losing ground from then on…..more here