Chinese Cargo Ship Repeatedly Docked in Occupied Sevastopol – FT
A Chinese cargo vessel has made at least three port calls in Russian-occupied Sevastopol this year, in defiance of Western sanctions that prohibit foreign ships from entering Crimean ports.
The Gaze reports this, referring to the Financial Times.
The 140-meter Heng Yang 9, sailing under a Panamanian flag and owned by Guangxi Changhai Shipping Company, was tracked in Crimea several times in recent months, according to Ukrainian officials.
Its first recorded stop was between June 19 and 22, followed by another in mid-August when the ship requested permission to load 101 containers before continuing to ports in Turkey and Egypt. Satellite images, radar scans and shipping data confirmed a third visit in September.
Ukraine’s presidential envoy on sanctions policy, Vladyslav Vlasiuk, said Kyiv had raised the matter with China’s Foreign Ministry and warned that vessels entering occupied ports “risk being added to sanctions lists.”
He stressed that Ukraine expects international partners to avoid any dealings with territories seized by Russia. Beijing assured Kyiv that it would review each case individually.
The FT report noted that during its September voyage in the Black Sea, the Heng Yang 9 appeared to falsify its routes, transmitting false coordinates to disguise its movements. Analysts from Lloyd’s List verified that the ship’s reported positions did not always match satellite observations.
The port calls come after Russia opened a new railway link to Crimea in April, which Moscow claims facilitates the movement of containers from occupied parts of Donetsk and Kherson regions.
Western sanctions banning foreign vessels from Crimean ports have been in place since Russia’s 2014 annexation of the peninsula. While China has not joined the sanctions regime, its commercial fleet had largely avoided calling at Russian-controlled ports until now.
As The Gaze reported earlier, U.S. President Donald Trump has suggested that Europe could help bring the Russian-Ukrainian war to an end by imposing sanctions or tariffs on China, Moscow’s biggest energy customer.