Captain of Vessel Involved in Transportation of Looted Ukrainian Grain Served Notification of Suspicion

He is suspected of making seven ship calls at the closed seaports in Sevastopol and Kerch to load stolen Ukrainian grain.

The Prosecutor’s Office for the Autonomous Republic of Crimea has served the Russian captain of the ANT vessel, who is involved in the transportation of looted Ukrainian grain, with notification of suspicion.

The Prosecutor’s Office for the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol announced this in a statement, the CFTS portal reports.

According to the statement, it has been established that the Russian captain of the ANT vessel entered the closed commercial seaports of Sevastopol and Kerch seven times to load looted Ukrainian grain.

“Realizing the illegality of his actions, the captain periodically turned off the vessel’s AIS (Automatic Identification System) and entered fictitious information about the route of the vessel, claiming that it was heading for ports in the Russian Federation and not the closed seaports on the occupied peninsula,” the statement said.

His actions are classified as violations of the procedure for entering and leaving the temporarily occupied territory of the peninsula (Section 2 of Article 332-1 of the Ukrainian Criminal Code).

Russia began actively using the temporarily occupied Crimea as a “gray zone” for the transportation and subsequent sale of looted Ukrainian grain to third countries after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.