Two Crimean sailors have managed to sneak through Ukrainian passport control, board a flight to Belarus, and return to their homes in occupied Crimea as of April 20, their lawyer, Alexander Rudenko, told Russia’s Tass news agency.
“They are happy that they have ended this nightmare period in their lives,” he said.
The Russian consulate in Kharkiv enabled the sailors’ escape by issuing the two men and their seven crewmates new Russian passports.
Border authorities did not recognize those passports as belonging to the two sailors, when the men boarded a flight to Belarus from Kyiv. The Ukraine State Border Service reported that the men’s Russian surnames on their passports differed from the Ukrainian surnames in the state database.
From Belarus, the two men traveled to Moscow and then onward to Crimea, said Rudenko. However, their seven crewmates were not able to escape because the border guards recognized them. They remain in Ukraine.
The nine sailors were first detained with their captain on March 25, when their fishing boat, the Nord, sailed into the Ukrainian waters of the Azov Sea. Ukraine’s maritime border guards arrested the ship, which sails under the Russian flag and is registered in occupied Crimea.
Ukrainian authorities then brought charges against the captain of the Nord, Volodymyr Horbenko, for allegedly violating Ukraine’s exit regime from occupied Crimea — a charge that could carry a sentence of up to five years in prison under Ukrainian law.
Meanwhile, a Ukrainian court fined Horbenko’s crew and confiscated their Crimean-issued Russian passports, which are not recognized in Ukraine. The men were released but told to report to the offices of the SBU the next week to testify in Horbenko’s case.
However, Russia’s General Consulate had other ideas. Issuing new documents for the detained sailors, it twice tried to sneak them out of the country.
On April 7, the nine crewmen tried to enter Russia through the Hoptivka border checkpoint in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region with documents from the consulate stating they were Russian citizens returning to Russia. Ukrainian border guards recognized them, and didn’t allow them to cross.
Then, on April 9, they tried unsuccessfully to cross Ukraine’s border with Crimea. In both cases they were charged with illegally attempting to cross the border.
Russia has stressed its displeasure with the situation, calling for Kyiv to allow the sailors to return home.
“We demand that [Ukraine] ceases mocking Russian citizens and grants them the opportunity to return home to their families without hindrance,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in an April 19 statement.
“Our patience is not unlimited. We reserve the right to a severe response.”
