All shows / The Quiet Tell

The Quiet Tell cover art

The Quiet Tell

The Ship That Pointed at the Pier

Interference scrambled a grain ship's position across the Black Sea. Bellingcat found it anyway, using the one number the satellites couldn't touch: the direction its bow was pointing.

Ines and Jonah · 23 min · 13 Oct 2026

FactUnion VerifiedEvery fact on the episode's fact sheet was checked against its sources. Wrong facts were corrected. What this meansFacts checked 13 Oct 2026

Chapters (8)

About this episode

In February 2026, the Russian-flagged bulk carrier Grumant disappeared into the haze of satellite-navigation interference that covers the Black Sea. At times its reported position put it on dry land. One field in its broadcast stayed steady: the heading, which comes from the ship's own compass and not from satellites. In this first episode of The Quiet Tell, Ines and Jonah retell Bellingcat's June 2026 investigation 'Heading Off', by Youri van der Weide, Galen Reich, Yörük Işık and Bridget Diakun. Their work matched that heading to a single berth in occupied Crimea, confirmed the stay with satellite imagery, and followed the grain to Benghazi, Libya. This is a retelling of Bellingcat's published work, not our own reporting.

We explain AIS, the radio broadcast every large ship sends about itself, in plain words. We go through why a gap in a ship's signal proves nothing on its own, why the difference between regional interference and deliberate spoofing matters, and how the team checked their hunch against the other ships nearby, before-and-after imagery and an outside expert. Then we ask the uncomfortable questions: how long the method keeps working now that it's public, and what happens, or doesn't, after open-source work gets it right. At the end we give the tell in one sentence and some open datasets you can explore yourself.

Hosted by Ines and Jonah, performed by synthetic voices. Supported by STELQ.

Facts and sources

Every fact used in this episode, with the sources it was checked against. Download as data

163 of 163 recorded lines matched the checked script.

  1. Bellingcat published ‘Heading Off: New Technique Helps Track Grain Smuggling Expansion to Libya’ on June 12, 2026, identifying the Russian-flagged bulk carrier Grumant as exporting grain from occupied Crimea to Libya.

  2. The Bellingcat researchers credited on the Grumant investigation are Youri van der Weide, Galen Reich, Yörük Işık and Bridget Diakun.

  3. Because of GNSS interference in the Black Sea, Grumant’s AIS position data was erratic and at times placed the ship on land.

  4. Between February 7 and February 19, 2026, Grumant transmitted 29 AIS messages reporting a heading of 267 to 268°, which matches the 267.5° orientation of Berth 1 at the Port of Feodosia.

  5. Bellingcat’s AIS data for the Grumant investigation came from Lloyd’s List Intelligence, and its high resolution satellite images of Feodosia and Benghazi came from Vantor, with further imagery from Planet Labs and Copernicus Sentinel.

    Reworded to match its sources. Not all of the satellite imagery came from Vantor: Vantor supplied the high resolution images, while Planet Labs and Copernicus Sentinel supplied other imagery.

Show all 29 factsShow fewer facts

  1. In the Vantor imagery, the ship at Berth 1 was identified as Grumant by its grey deck, seven hatches and bright yellow foremast.

  2. Satellite imagery showed Berth 1 at Feodosia empty on February 6, 2026, before Grumant arrived, and empty again on February 22, 2026, after the ship had left the area of interference.

  3. Bellingcat checked the other vessels transmitting AIS near Feodosia and found Grumant was the only one that consistently matched the berth’s heading during the period in question.

  4. Bellingcat consulted Charlie Brown, a former US naval officer, who validated the heading method while noting that compasses can in theory be spoofed, so the result has to be cross-referenced with other sources (paraphrase only; exact wording not verified).

  5. IMO guidelines describe the AIS heading input as coming from the ship’s heading sensor, typically a gyrocompass, which is independent of GNSS.

  6. In AIS Class A position reports (messages 1, 2 and 3), a true-heading value of 511 means heading is not available.

  7. Terrestrial AIS receivers have a range of roughly 40 nautical miles, while satellite AIS provides global coverage, and gaps in AIS can come from poor coverage, signal collisions or a master’s legitimate safety decision rather than wrongdoing.

  8. On April 27, 2026, Kpler published an analysis arguing that the distinction between AIS spoofing and GNSS interference decides the claim.

  9. On September 30, 2026, Lloyd’s List Intelligence published guidance on using satellite imagery to move AIS spoofing from ‘probable’ to ‘confirmed’.

  10. Academic assessments of AIS data report that heading is frequently missing or implausible in harbour areas, where ships may be stationary or manoeuvring at low speed.

    Reworded to match its sources. The evidence says ships in harbour are stationary, made fast or manoeuvring at under 1 knot; it does not mention ships swinging.

  11. A September 2026 arXiv study analysed AIS data from more than 367,000 vessels and identified 31 persistent anomalous hotspots in maritime traffic, at least 22 of which showed strong evidence of GPS spoofing.

    Reworded to match its sources. The study found 31 anomalous hotspots, and only at least 22 of them showed strong evidence of GPS spoofing, so calling all 31 GPS spoofing hotspots overstates it.

  12. The Royal Institute of Navigation’s 2026 maritime report surveyed 271 respondents and found that 79% had experienced GNSS interference.

  13. Stanford’s rfi.stanford.edu platform provides ongoing, crowdsourced tracking of GNSS spoofing events worldwide.

  14. In 2024, Kiborg News published reporting, including shipping manifests, linking Grumant to grain shipments from occupied Crimea to Syria.

  15. Bellingcat’s May 2023 piece ‘Grain Trail’ used satellite imagery to track Russia’s ‘ghost ships’ carrying grain.

  16. The Libya Observer reported on April 7, 2026 that the Russian-flagged ship Grumant had arrived in Benghazi.

  17. The vessel Damas Wave delivered grain from occupied Ukraine to the Libyan port of Misrata in January 2025.

  18. Ukraine sanctioned Grumant (IMO 9385879) on November 25, 2025, according to its GUR war-sanctions registry.

  19. Between March and May 2026, Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs forwarded information about Grumant’s activities to diplomatic missions in the United Kingdom, Turkey and Tunisia.

    Reworded to match its sources. The claim says several ministries sent the notices, but the evidence says only the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did.

  20. Our checks found no reports of new US, UK or EU sanctions against Grumant or its owner or manager since Bellingcat published on June 12, 2026, and Grumant’s sanctions entry is listed on OpenSanctions.

  21. On October 8, 2026, the US Treasury announced ‘Operation Economic Outcast’, sanctioning 17 shadow-fleet vessels for transporting Iranian petroleum.

  22. The Kyiv School of Economics’ September 2026 shadow-fleet tracker reported that shadow-fleet shipments of crude and oil products from Baltic Sea ports rose 16% while Russia’s overall seaborne oil exports fell.

  23. In July 2026, Google paused an AI feature for satellite images after fears it could produce ‘deepfakes in the sky’.

  24. On September 10, 2026, Columbia Journalism Review published a feature on the future of visual investigations when investigators can no longer trust their eyes.

If you like The Quiet Tell, you might also like