ARMA will sell the seized Russian vessel that blocked the Kerch Strait

The National Agency for Identification, Search and Asset Management (ARMA) has received permission to sell the seized Russian tanker.

The Dnipro District Court of Kyiv allowed the arrested Russian tanker “Nika Spirit” to be handed over for sale, ARMA reported.

This became possible thanks to the initiative of ARMA and the support of the Prosecutor’s Office of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol. Previously, the tanker was handed over to the agency for management, but now the vessel will be sold in order to quickly fill the state budget with funds for defense needs.

ARMA plans to sell the tanker through the electronic auction system Prozorro.Prodazhi. This will allow the state to receive funds from the sale of the seized asset faster. The next steps will be the holding of a competition for the organizer of the sale, the assessment of the value of the asset by an independent appraiser and the putting the tanker up for auction.

It will be recalled that the tanker “Nika Spirit”, formerly known as Neyma, was detained on July 24, 2019 in the port of Izmail. According to Equasis, it was identified as a vessel blocking the Kerch Strait in November 2018. Then the Russian border guards seized the Ukrainian warships with 24 crew members at gunpoint.

USM previously reported that ARMA had found an operator for the seized “Nika Spirit” tanker. The document was signed with the winner of the competitive asset selection — PJSC “Kyiv River Port”.