At the request of the prosecutor's office of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol, the Shevchenkivsky District Court of Kyiv seized six ships that violated the procedure for entering/leaving the occupied Crimea while transporting Ukrainian grain stolen by the occupiers, the press service of the prosecutor's office of Crimea has reported.

"The pretrial investigation established that the vessels Amur-2501, Alexander Grin, M. Andreev, Fedor, St. Konstantin and Kapitan Korchin, under the flags of the occupying state, are carrying out systematic illegal activities from/to the closed Sevastopol Sea Trade Port, transporting Ukrainian grain to third countries.

In this way, the Crimean peninsula is used by the Russian Federation as "a springboard for the illegal transportation of grain stolen from the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine."

"Since July 2014, the state has officially stopped the operation of all ports of the occupied peninsula and closed its harbors for international navigation. We qualify the entry of ships under a foreign flag into the seaports of Crimea as actions that undermine the sovereignty of Ukraine and violate the norms of national legislation, and therefore entail criminal liability ship owners, operators and ship captains," Head of the prosecutor's office of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol Ihor Ponochovny said.

The Prosecutor's Office of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea recalled that earlier, within the framework of this proceeding, six more ships-violators were already seized, and two captains of the Russian ships Matros Pozinich and Mikhail Nenashev were also suspected under Part 2 of Article 332-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.

The pretrial investigation is carried out by the Main Directorate of the SBU in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea.