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FSB Arrests Freighter Off Crimea

Bulk
File photo

Published Jan 7, 2016 8:09 PM by The Maritime Executive

Border patrol units of the Russian Federal Security Service, or FSB, reportedly detained the Cambodian-flagged general cargo vessel Svaytoy Georgiy recently due to alleged suspicious movements off the coast of the disputed Republic of Crimea. The FSB is the successor agency to the Soviet Union's KGB security and intelligence service.

An FSB spokesman confirmed to media that “the vessel violated the regime of the state border of the Russian Federation . . . deviated from the recommended course and dropped anchor [near] the village of Chernomorkoye without permission.” Chernomorkoye is on the northwest corner of the Crimean peninsula, which is claimed by Ukraine but administered by the Russian Federation since the region's declaration of independence in 2014.

The captain of the Georgiy faces charges under the administrative article “Violation of the Russian Federation's state border regime,” and the owner of the vessel may face a fine.

The 1977-built, 3,500 dwt Georgiy was reportedly under way from the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don to Varna, Hungary at the time of the incident. As of January 6, the Georgiy's AIS track showed the vessel approaching the Romanian port of Galati.

There have been other standoffs in the region as Russia asserts its new primacy in the Crimean maritime domain.

In December, Turkish media reported that two Russian military vessels intervened in an altercation between a Turkish-flagged merchant ship and a convoy of towed Ukrainian jack-up rigs, ending what Russian sources called an illegal attempt to block the tow. 

The multi-million dollar rigs, owned by blacklisted offshore firm Chernomorneftegaz, were being towed from Ukrainian to Russian territorial waters. The Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs described the removal of the rigs as “internationally wrongful acts . . . aimed at the systematic violation of the sovereignty, sovereign rights and jurisdiction over Ukraine internal waters, territorial sea, exclusive economic zone and continental shelf in the Black and Azov Seas.”