Russia is preparing to nationalize a major port terminal in Azov
The Arbitration Court of the Rostov Region has begun hearing a lawsuit filed by the Southern Transport Prosecutor’s Office seeking the transfer to the state of a 96.6% stake in LLC “SK ‘Golubaya Volna’,” which operates a terminal at the Port of Azov. The prosecutor’s office is also seeking to invalidate the agreements under which this stake was transferred from the U.S. company Blue Wave Shipping, Inc. to the Malta-registered Delta Streamline Limited, which was later renamed Blue Wave Shipping Limited.
The court’s ruling dated September 16 was published in the arbitration case registry. The defendants in the case are Blue Wave Shipping Limited, which owns 96.6% of “Blue Wave,” and Blue Wave Shipping, Inc. Rosmorrichflot and the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) have been brought in as third parties.
At the same time, the prosecutor’s office asked the court to freeze the company’s shares, assets, and funds. The agency also seeks to prohibit management from worsening employees’ conditions, ceasing the company’s operations, distributing profits, or disposing of assets. A preliminary hearing and consideration of the motion for interim measures are scheduled for October 7.
Blue Wave Shipping has been operating since 1994 and is engaged in the transportation of dry cargo in the ports of the Mediterranean, Black, and Azov Seas. According to Kommersant, the company owns ten dry cargo ships with deadweights ranging from 3,000 to 3,700 metric tons. The Blue Wave terminal covers 4.8 hectares and can handle approximately 760,000 metric tons of cargo per year.
In 2025, the terminal’s cargo turnover decreased by 14.5%—to 509,900 metric tons. This accounted for about 12% of the transshipment volume at the Port of Azov, according to data from “Morcenter-TEK.”
Oles Gruzdev, a lawyer at Forward Legal, links the lawsuit to the possible application of legislation regarding foreign control of strategic enterprises. According to him, foreign entities may hold stakes in such companies only after prior approval from the antitrust authority, which may not have been obtained in this case. Roman Kuzmin, an advisor at Pen & Paper, speculated that the lawsuit may have been filed because the deals were not pre-approved by a government commission.
According to “Proekt’s” calculations, since 2021, the Russian state has seized at least 18 port complexes, terminals, and companies involved in maritime transport. Among them are the Bronka Port in St. Petersburg, the Murmansk Sea Fishing Port, the FESCO Group, and the Kaliningrad and Perm river ports.
In 2025, the state was transferred, in particular, the grain terminal in Azov, the St. Petersburg oil terminal, as well as the commercial seaports of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and Tuapse. In 2026, the Rusagro terminal in Tuapse, Transbunker, and the Rostov Sea Multimodal Port were added to this list.
This was reported by Russian propaganda media.
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