The Prosecutorʼs Office of Ukraine announced suspicions against two captains of the Russian ships "Matros Pozinich" and "Mikhail Nenashev", which are transporting stolen Ukrainian grain.
This is reported by the Prosecutor Generalʼs Office.
According to the investigation, the captains of these ships systematically enter and leave the closed port of Sevastopol, where the Russians bring grain from the occupied territories. These ships then take the grain to third countries. In order to hide the transportation of grain, the captains turned off the automatic identification system (AIS) and entered fictitious information into it — supposedly the ships were heading to the ports of the Russian Federation, and not to the closed sea ports of the temporarily occupied Crimea.
The captains were informed of the suspicion of violation of the order of entry and exit from the temporarily occupied territory (Part 2 of Article 332-1 of the Criminal Code). While they face 3 to 5 years of imprisonment with deprivation of the right to hold certain positions or engage in certain activities for a period of up to 3 years.
- In June, "Skhemy" journalists called these vessels participants in the export of stolen grain. Its vessels are exported to Syria, the Russian Federation and Turkey.
- On July 13, quadrilateral negotiations were held in Turkey regarding the safe export of Ukrainian grain from ports. During this meeting, the parties agreed to create a coordination center in Istanbul. The delegations of Ukraine, Russia, Turkey and the UN will meet again next week. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres announced a "big step forward".
- WSJ wrote that Istanbul had previously agreed on the unblocking of three Ukrainian ports.