A Ukrainian sailor accused of trying to sink his Russian boss’s luxury yacht as payback for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine says he has no regrets, despite being taken into custody.
According to the newspaper Ultima Hora, the 55-year-old sailor had been working as chief engineer on the $8-million yacht for 10 years and attempted to sink the boat while it was docked in Mallorca, Spain over the weekend by opening valves in the ship’s engine room.
He decided to try to sink the boat as “revenge” after watching video of a Russian helicopter attack on a civilian building in Ukraine’s capital city of Kyiv, according to court documents cited in the newspaper.
According to the BBC, the 157-foot-long boat, named Lady Anastasia, belongs to the head of a Russian state arms dealer, Alexander Mikheev.
Mikheev, 61, is the head of Rosoboronexport, a company that specializes in exporting arms, including tanks, weapons, ammunition and ships.
The sailor, identified by the Associated Press as Taras Ostapchuk, was arrested Saturday and later released on bail.
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“They were attacking innocents,” he told local outlets, according to the BBC, adding that he’d make additional attempts to drown the yacht again if given the chance.
“He regards the owner of the yacht as a criminal because he earns money selling arms that, according to him, kill Ukrainians,” a judge wrote of Ostapchuk after an interrogation, according to documents viewed by the AP.
After leaving jail, Ostapchuk told the AP that he planned to travel to Ukraine to help defend the country from Russian troops.
“All Ukrainian citizens must be defenders of our fatherland because it is being subject to Russian aggression,” he said.
“We must stop this war.”
Earlier this month, Russian President Vladimir Putin‘s yacht, Graceful, was moved abruptly from German waters to Russian territory while in the middle of repairs.
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With increasing sanctions being imposed on Russia by countries around the world, CNBC reports that the property owned by top Russian tycoons is under increasing threat of being seized.
In the U.S., the Biden administration recently announced a new task force that will look to seize lucrative assets, such as mansions and yachts.
“This coming week, we will launch a multilateral Transatlantic task force to identify, hunt down, and freeze the assets of sanctioned Russian companies and oligarchs – their yachts, their mansions, and any other ill-gotten gains that we can find and freeze under the law,” the White House tweeted Saturday.
France has also put together a list of valuable items owned by Russian oligarchs that could be seized under European Union sanctions.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced sanctions on Putin and 61 other Russian individuals and entities last week, including the country’s elites and major banks.
Trudeau said Putin does “not have much” or any personal holdings at all in Canada, but the sanctions are meant to prevent the Russian president from having “loopholes” to move his money around and to show him that his personal wealth is at “significant risk,” Trudeau said.
“We want to make sure that we’re suffocating the Russian regime. That’s our goal,” said Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly.
— with files from Global News
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