Searches are being carried out at a factory in the town of Berdiansk in Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region, which is suspected of supplying cables for the Russian Navy’s submarines in breach of the Ukrainian sanctions against Russia.
Officers have seized documentation and a quantity of military products which were supposed to be sent to Russia via a third country in the near future, Serhiy Levchenko, a spokesman for Zaporizhia regional branch of Ukraine’s Security Service, said.
According to the inquiry, the miscreants sold products for the Russian Navy through affiliated firms in one of European countries. It is alleged that the illegal scheme was ordered by Russian companies specializing in equipping nuclear submarines, including those based in Crimea.
The Ukrainian authorities have launched a criminal inquiry on charges of high treason and illegal export from Ukraine of raw material, supplies, equipment and technologies for making weapons, military and special hardware. The inquiry is underway.
At issue is the Azov Cable Company, a limited liability company formed around the Berdiansk-based Azov Cable, regional law enforcement sources told Interfax-Ukraine. The enterprise made cables for Russian submarines and until 2014 sold its products to the Russian Navy directly.
This became impossible after Ukraine introduced its anti-Russian sanctions, and so a scheme was devised to get the cables into Russia via a company in a Baltic state, sources said.
Searches at the Azov Cable facilities continue.
