The Atlantic Cruiser, a German ship chartered by a Ukrainian company, carried no military purpose goods, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry has reported.
"We have reports that there are no weapons there [on board the ship], and that the cargo is exclusively civilian in nature," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Oleksandr Dykusarov said at a briefing in Kyiv on Wednesday.
He added that according to Ukraine’s Consulate General in Hamburg, the ship’s owner released an official statement about the situation around the ship and denied reports of the presence of military purpose goods on board the vessel.
Earlier, some media reported that on Saturday, April 14, the Atlantic Cruiser, a German vessel that was heading to the Syrian port of Tartus, was spotted in the Mediterranean Sea. Reports said that weapons were allegedly on board the vessel. A few days ago, the vessel stopped in Djibouti, where it took on a cargo of arms and ammunition from an Iranian vessel. The cargo was allegedly for Syrian troops fighting on the side of President Bashar al-Assad.
According to media reports, the charterer of the vessel is a Ukrainian company called White Whale Shipping, whose office is located in Odesa. Nevertheless, the Ukrainian company has rejected all of the accusations and said that the Atlantic Cruiser is engaged only in the transportation of civilian cargo.
