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The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) announced earlier today that it has seized a vessel belonging to Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet” in the port of Odesa. According to a SBU statement released on Telegram, the ship had “illegally transported Ukrainian agricultural products from temporarily occupied Crimea.”
The agency said the dry cargo vessel’s owner is under sanctions imposed by Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council and that he had “regularly changed the ship’s name and its nominal foreign beneficiaries” in an effort to evade restrictions.
The name of the vessel was not disclosed. The SBU said it arrived in Odesa flying the flag of an African country in order to pick up a shipment of steel pipes. At the time of the seizure, the captain and 16 crew members — citizens of several Middle Eastern countries — were on board.
According to the SBU, before Russia’s full-scale invasion the ship had called at Sevastopol at least seven times to load agricultural products illegally exported by Russia. In January 2021, the vessel reportedly carried nearly 7,000 tons of grain from the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula to North Africa.