A Swedish court has ordered the detention of the Russian captain of a tanker suspected of sailing under a false flag in the Baltic Sea. The 55-year-old skipper was arrested on Friday on suspicion of using forged documents.
The vessel, Sea Owl One, was flying the flag of Comoros but is not believed to be registered there, making it stateless. It is also on an EU sanctions list. Swedish coast guards boarded the ship south of Trelleborg on Thursday after the captain presented suspicious documents.
The ship departed from Brazil en route to Primorsk, Russia, and has been used to transport oil between Russia and Brazil multiple times. The Russian embassy confirmed that 10 of the 24 crew members are Russian, with the rest being Indonesian.
This is the second such incident in a week; earlier, Swedish authorities investigated the Guinean-flagged cargo ship Caffa on similar grounds. France has also seized several tankers this year linked to Russia's shadow fleet, which evades Western sanctions imposed after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
