Sweden seizes vessel suspected of transporting stolen Ukrainian goods
A Swedish court has ordered the arrest of the vessel Caffa at the request of the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office. The ship is suspected of being involved in the illegal transport of Ukrainian goods from temporarily occupied territories.
Source: Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko on Facebook
Quote: "Today, a court in Sweden arrested the vessel Caffa. This is the first case in which, following a request for international legal assistance from the Ukrainian prosecution service, a foreign court has approved the arrest of a vessel that may have been involved in the illegal export of Ukrainian products from temporarily occupied territory."
Details: Invastigators have found that the Caffa systematically violated the rules governing entry to and exit from temporarily occupied Ukrainian territory in a manner harmful to the interests of the Ukrainian state.
To conceal these activities, the vessel used a false registration scheme and was listed in international databases as "Guinea False".
On 12 March 2026, the Prosecutor General's Office submitted a request for international legal assistance to the Ministry of Justice of the Kingdom of Sweden.
The Ukrainian side requested a search of the vessel, the questioning of the captain and crew members, and the arrest of the Caffa.
Swedish authorities promptly began executing the request. A search of the vessel and witness interviews were conducted within a week of its receipt.
"Today, this process received an important procedural continuation – the court approved the arrest of the vessel," Kravchenko said.
He stressed that this was a concrete result of international legal cooperation between Ukraine and its partners. Daily work, information exchanges and the collection and transfer of additional evidence had produced results.
Russia continues to plunder Ukrainian resources in the temporarily occupied territories, while Ukraine continues to document these crimes by tracing routes, identifying vessels, recording illegal calls at occupied territories and using all available international legal assistance mechanisms.
The prosecutor general said this is "a clear signal that no manipulation involving flags, routes or registration will help avoid responsibility".
A Swedish court has preliminarily approved the transfer to Ukraine of the sanctioned vessel Caffa. However, the decision can still be appealed.
The vessel, detained in March, has remained in the port of Trelleborg for several months. The court found that the current arrest order has sufficient legal grounds and that all conditions for its transfer to Ukraine have been met.
Background:
- Earlier, the captain of a Russian shadow fleet vessel, a citizen of a Middle Eastern country, was served with a notice of suspicion after visiting temporarily occupied territories from which products stolen from Ukraine were exported.
- Ukraine's Foreign Intelligence Service previously reported that Russia plans to increase the number of oil tankers sailing under its flag in response to the growing number of detentions of vessels from its shadow fleet.
- Ukraine's Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said that the Ministry of Defence team has become actively involved in the economic war to work on blocking the Russian shadow fleet.
- President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated that the current restrictions on Russian seaborne oil exports should reduce Russian revenues by at least US$30 billion annually.
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