On 23 January, the French navy frigate Aconit (F 713) exchanged this brief communication with the Russian Navy ship ‘Vasiliy Tatishchev’. The Tatishchev is ship of Vishnya class (also known as the Meridian class), a group of intelligence collection ships built for the Soviet Navy in the 1980s.
The two ships were underway north of the Balearic Islands.
The Aconit continued to shadow the Russian unit as it sailed south of France.