the coastguard said in a statement<\/a>.<\/p>\nThe vessel was escorted to an anchorage near Ystad in southern Sweden.<\/p>\n
“Upon discovery, it was determined that the vessel is on the EU sanctions list and several unclear issues surrounding the vessel were identified, including its flag status,” the coastguard said.<\/p>\n
The vessel had “an unknown flag status” and was “en route from a port in the Gulf of Finland with an unknown destination,” it said.<\/p>\n
It was loaded with oil and had 24 crew members on board.<\/p>\n
Moscow’s “shadow fleet” consists of vessels used to skirt Western sanctions. They are often ageing ships in poor condition, of opaque ownership and without proper insurance.<\/p>\n
“The government takes this incident seriously, even though it does not involve a major oil spill this time,” Civil Defence Minister Carl-Oskar Bohlin said on X.<\/p>\n
The Russian shadow fleet, he said, “poses a significant safety and environmental threat.”<\/p>\n
“A more extensive spill could have had devastating consequences for marine ecosystems and the Swedish coastline,” he added.<\/p>\n
A preliminary investigation into a suspected environmental crime had been launched and an investigation was being conducted on board the vessel.<\/p>\n
According to the ship tracking site Marine traffic, Flora 1 departed the Russian oil port Primorsk headed for Santos in Brazil, flying the flag of Sierra Leone.<\/p>\n
Sweden’s coastguard has already carried out previous boardings of suspect vessels.<\/p>\n
On 12 March, the coastguard boarded the Sea Owl I in territorial waters and opened a false flag investigation.<\/p>\n
Less than a week earlier, it had intercepted another suspected false-flagged cargo vessel in the same area.<\/p>\n
Additional sources \u2022 AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published on 03\/04\/2026 – 12:34 GMT+2 Sweden’s coastguard said it boarded a vessel subjected to EU sanctions on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":562710,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[17237,192,5335,1206,7269,79,6804],"class_list":{"0":"post-562709","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-coast-guard","9":"tag-environment","10":"tag-european-union","11":"tag-russia","12":"tag-sanctions","13":"tag-science","14":"tag-sweden"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=562709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/562710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=562709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=562709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=562709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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