Captain of ship detained in Black Sea faces up to five years in prison

The captain of the ship, which Ukrainian law enforcement officers detained for stealing grain through Crimea, was informed of the suspicion.

This was reported by the prosecutor’s office of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol.

The actions of the captain of the foreign ship were qualified as a violation of the procedure for entering and leaving the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine.

In particular, this is a case of causing harm to the interests of the state, committed repeatedly, by an official using his official position (Part 2 of Article 332-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine).

The sanction of the article provides for up to 5 years of imprisonment.

The investigation established that the captain made an illegal entry into the Sevastopol port in November 2024. There, the ship was loaded with more than 4.6 thousand tons of wheat, probably captured by representatives of the aggressor state in the temporarily occupied territories of Zaporizhia and Kherson regions.

“At the end of November, the captain made an illegal exit of the ship from the port. To hide his illegal activities, the suspect periodically turned off the AIS and entered fictitious information about the vessel’s course into it,” the prosecutor’s office reports.

We will remind, in April 2025, the vessel was detained in the internal waters of Ukraine. Based on a court decision, it was arrested.