An Iranian freighter sank in the Caspian Sea on the route through which Iran supplies weapons to Russia

The Rona freighter, flying the Iranian flag, sank on Wednesday in the Caspian Sea off the coast of Turkmenistan, the Turkmen Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed on Thursday.

The ship made regular trips between ports in Iran and Russian ports in Astrakhan, Makhachkala and Azov, a route that Ukrainian intelligence has identified as a route for transporting Iranian weapons to Russia for use against Ukraine. According to the findings of these services, only between October 2024 and December 2025, Rona made 20 cruises on this route.

Before going to the bottom, the freighter, sailing once again to Astrakhan, suffered serious damage amidships, accompanied by clouds of black smoke, the Ukrainian Astra channel reported on Wednesday.

The Turkmen coast guard quickly responded to the SOS signal and rescued the entire 14-person crew from Iran and India.

Along a path that Ron regularly traveled, Tehran has supplied Moscow with billions of dollars' worth of weapons since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In the first months of 2023 alone, Iranian or Iranian-flagged cargo ships transported over 300,000 tonnes of cargo through the Caspian Sea to Russia. artillery shells and millions of rounds of ammunition – the Wall Street Journal reported in April 2023, describing this smuggling sea route.

Since the end of 2021, the Iranian regime has also sold missiles worth almost $3 billion to Russia, Bloomberg reported last Monday, citing a Western security official.

These military deals between Moscow and Tehran also included more than 1,000 short-range ballistic missiles, nearly 200 surface-to-air missiles, and thousands of Shahed-136 drones, the technology of which Iran eventually transferred to Russia, allowing it to produce them under its own name, Geran-2.

Tadeusz Brzozowski (PAP)

tebe/mal/