Ak.-A.-Karpinskiy

On Sep 16, 2024, at about noon, global maritime tracking showed that the 'Akademik Alexander Karpinsky', which is infamous for mapping Antarctica’s banned oil and gas, was hovering at a peninsula in northern Tallinn. An ongoing ban imposed by the European Union since April 17, 2022, however, is thwarting Russian-flagged ships from entering the region’s ports. The implications of the ship’s apparent presence in Tallinn — a location it has been barred from accessing — sent national maritime authorities scrambling. Upon inspection, officials confirmed that the ship was not physically present at the designated location. This apparent discrepancy led to the conclusion that the US-sanctioned ship had employed location spoofing. The ship had engaged in a significant incident of GPS interference, falsely positioning itself within global maritime information systems to appear docked in Tallinn. The ship appeared to have used a “modified AIS”, or even a specialised military variant, which is capable of altering its reported location. This manipulation allowed the ship’s coordinates to be artificially set to a port in Tallinn, while it was actually operating from its St Petersburg home port, about 170 nautical miles away.