Russian captain who caused accident near Britain found guilty of murder

Last year, his container ship collided with a tanker off the east coast of Great Britain. The accident killed 38-year-old Filipino Mark Pernia.

London’s Old Bailey Court found the captain of the container ship Solong, 59-year-old Vladimir Motin, guilty of manslaughter due to gross negligence. Reuters reports.

Recall that on March 10, 2025, the container ship Solong collided with the tanker Stena Immaculate in the North Sea. One crew member died.

At the time of the incident, the Stena Immaculate was at anchor and had more than 220,000 barrels of aviation fuel on board. When the container ship Solong crashed into it, a fire broke out on both ships. Meanwhile, 15 containers of a highly toxic substance — sodium cyanide — were on board the Solong.

The Solong bridge had no alarm system, and the crews of both vessels were not warned of the danger. After the incident, Motin allegedly wrote to his wife on WhatsApp that there had been a “catastrophe” and that he would be “guilty,” to which he was advised to state that he “did not see the other vessel” on the instruments.

According to the prosecutor’s office, the Russian Motin had been heading for an imminent collision for more than half an hour and “did nothing” to avoid it. The defense insisted that the captain had tried to take the vessel off autopilot, but the jury found his actions to be gross negligence.

Also, the day before, USM reported that a vessel heading to Ukraine had broken down in the Bosphorus.