Russia: – Denmark has arrested Russian research vessel
The state-run Russian news agency Ria writes that 61 people on board the vessel are said to have been arrested in the port of Skagen on Monday. The news was first published on Facebook by it Russian Embassy in Denmark Thursday afternoon.
The vessel goes by the name “Akademik Ioffe” and, according to the Russian embassy, conducts research for the Russian state The Shirshov Institute for Oceanology, Russia’s largest research center in the field of marine research.
Danish authorities must have seized the ship’s documents with a legal knowledge from a Danish court, according to the Russian embassy’s Facebook page.
The Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs told the news agency Ritzau on Thursday evening that it knew about the case and that it was contact with the Russian embassy about the ship, which had stopped in Skagen.
Danske TV 2 Nord reports that there must have been police and lawyers on board “Akademik Ioffe” in recent days. DN has not succeeded in obtaining further information about the case from the National Police in Denmark.
An attaché at the embassy tells the news agency Tass that the request for arrest comes from a Canadian company called One Ocean Expeditions. In 2019, the company must have started chartering the ship for passenger journeys.
But the ship must “suddenly and unexpectedly” have been withdrawn from passenger use in 2019 by state owners to instead be used for research purposes, which One Ocean Expeditions sees as a breach of contract, reports Reuters.
“Akademisk Lazarev”
In a documentary in DN two weeks ago, the Business Security Council sounded the alarm about Russian mapping of critical Norwegian infrastructure.
Among other things, the Security Council has followed the movements of the Russian research ship “Akademik Lazarev” and believes that the vessel has mapped critical Norwegian infrastructure such as cables and oil pipelines. The Security Council has also received several reports of concern from players in the oil and gas industry about incidents and unwanted ships that appear near sensitive operations.
– It started last autumn, from one of our members, an oil technology company, we received a number of reports of concern related to the misunderstood was foreign intelligence company against its operations. An oil service company that maintains underwater infrastructure on behalf of many operators, said Odin Johannessen, director of the Business Safety Council.
– I want to call them spy ships, said researcher and teacher Ståle Ulriksen at the Norwegian Defense College / Naval War College to DN last week.
Reuters writes that the Danish authorities must have taken action based on information received from a third party about profit activities.
According to the Russian news agency RIA Agency, according to Reuters websites, there must have been 61 people on board.
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