MOSCOW – The crewmembers from the Russian tanker Neyma, which was detained in the Izmail port of the Odesa region on July 25, have said they are not going to come in for interviews when summoned by the Ukrainian authorities.
“I am not a witness in the so-called Kerch case. Why should I come in for interviews?” the tanker’s captain Ilya Drobyazko told Interfax upon arriving in Moscow from Chisinau with the rest of the crew.
According to Drobyazko, the tanker’s crew has been working under a contract “to take the vessel to a place where it will undergo repairs” and has nothing to do with the November 2018 events.
“We haven’t violated anything – neither Ukrainian nor Russian laws,” the captain said.
“Before entering the port, we observed all formalities – we registered a one-time visit. On the same day, we moored the vessel to a ship repair plant at the Izmail port. People who introduced themselves as representatives of the Military Prosecutor’s Office of Odesa came in the morning and launched investigative procedures,” he told reporters at the Domodedovo airport.
The crew was not going to argue with Ukrainian security services, Drobyazko said.
“What do I need a scandal for? Although, maybe they had no right to board our vessel without a representative of the Russian consulate. I think they had no such right because we are under the flag of another state,” he said.
According to Drobyazko, the representatives of the Prosecutor’s Office explained their rights and responsibilities to the Neyma crew in accordance with Ukrainian legal norms.
“Everything was peaceful. They allowed us to contact our families,” he said.
The sailors are now heading back to Krasnodar, where they live.
“We are going home to our families. We will have a rest. We will now board another plane in Krasnodar and fly straight home,” the captain said.
The press service of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) on July 25 announced the detention in the Izmail port of the Russian tanker Neyma which the SBU claims had blocked the Ukrainian Navy’s Yany Kapu tug and Berdyansk and Nikopol armored gunboats in the Kerch Strait in November 2018. According to the SBU, the Russian owners renamed the Neyma tanker as the Nika Spirit after the incident in the Kerch Strait.
It was reported later that the Russian tanker’s crew had been freed and had taken a flight to Russia from Moldova. The vessel, however, will remain in Izmail for now.
The SBU has not recorded any violations of the Maritime Law or Ukrainian legislation by the tanker’s crew and therefore sees no reason to detain the sailors, the SBU press service told Interfax.
