Captain of ship detained in Odesa port suspected of sailing to occupied Crimea

The suspected captain of the “shadow” vessel, which was detained in December 2025, faces up to five years in prison.

This is a citizen of a Middle Eastern country, the Prosecutor’s Office of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol reports.

Under the procedural guidance of the prosecutor’s office, the captain of the Russian dry cargo ship was informed of suspicion of violating the procedure for entering and leaving the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine (Part 2 of Article 332-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine).

After the vessel was detained in the Odesa seaport in December 2025, during searches and analysis of documents seized on board, the investigation established that it had previously made an illegal voyage to the occupied Crimea.

According to the investigation, before that, the man was driving a sanctioned gas tanker, the name and flag of which were systematically changed to hide its activities. In 2024, the vessel exported about 2 thousand tons of liquefied gas from the closed Kerch Sea Fishing Port for delivery to the Middle Eastern country.

“To hide such voyages, the captain changed information about the vessel’s actual route and periodically turned off AIS, a system that allows tracking the movement of vessels. Such actions are a violation of maritime safety rules and are used to evade control. The investigation believes that this is a typical practice of the so-called “shadow” fleet, which is used to circumvent sanctions and illegally export resources from occupied territories,” the prosecutor’s office emphasized.

We will remind, in February 2026, border guards confirmed the name of the arrested vessel — it is the bulk carrier Gladius (IMO: 8919879) under the flag of Guinea-Bissau.