Police in Sweden have seized a false-flagged cargo ship off its southern coast believed to belong to Russia’s shadow fleet and suspected of transporting stolen Ukrainian grain, authorities said Saturday.
The 96-metre Caffa left Casablanca in Morocco on 24 February and was headed for Saint Petersburg, Russia, when armed Swedish police boarded it on Friday off the southern town of Trelleborg.
“The vessel is on the Ukraine sanctions list. Information indicates that it has essentially been used to transport grain that is stolen, as we understand it, from Ukraine,” the coast guard’s acting head of operations, Daniel Stenling, told a press conference.
“We have been able to establish that the vessel is sailing under a false flag. She is registered in Guinea, but that registration is in fact false.” He added that “a majority” of the 11 crew members were Russian. The Russian embassy in Stockholm said it had been informed by the Swedish coast guard that 10 of the crew were…
