A Simferopol court has ruled on taking in charge another nine Ukrainian citizens who were aboard three Ukrainian vessels detained by Russian border guards in the Black Sea.
Their names are Oleg Melnychuk (Yana Kapu tugboat commander), Bogdan Nebylitsa (Nikopol armoured boat commander), Andriy Drach (an employee of Ukraine’s Security Service), Volodymir Lisovoy, Denis Gritsenko, Yuri Bezyazychny, Vyacheslav Zinchenko, Yevgeny Syamidotsky and Andriy Shevchenko, news agency Interfax reports.
Earlier, the court resolved to arrest 15 of 24 crewmembers of the detained three ships. 12 of them, including Roman Mokryak, Berdyansk armoured boat commander, will be held in custody until 25 January 2019. In turn, a Kerch court took the decision to arrest two Ukrainian navy men and SBU employee Vasil Soroka, who were injured in the course of the conflict in the Kerch Strait. They will be sent to a detention centre after they are discharged from hospital.
All the arrestees who are suspects in a criminal case (Illegal crossing of the state border of Russia) may face up to six years in prison.
On November 25, three Ukrainian ships were captured by the Russian special forces in the Kerch Strait. According to Ukrainian media, Russia took prisoner 24 people, 6 sailors were injured. In response, 30-day martial law has been introduced in 10 regions of Ukraine — those bordering Russia, Transnistria and the Black Sea coast, as well as in Chernihiv region bordering Belarus.
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СК, belsat.eu
