Six Ukrainian sailors who were captured by pirates in the Gulf of Guinea in July safely returned home on Sept. 7, the Ukrainian President’s Office announced.
“Our seamen have spent over a month in pirate captivity, but they finally got back to Ukraine, and they will soon meet with their families,” President Volodymyr Zelensky was quoted as saying.
“I’d like to send thanks to our diplomats and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who conducted complicated negotiations regarding the prisoners’ release. We were always focused on the situation. Ukrainians should know that every citizen matters to our nation.”
The President’s Office also published a picture showing the sailors upon arrival at Boryspil International Airport outside Kyiv.
The six sailors were captured on July 17 off the coast of Benin when pirates attacked oil and chemical tanker Curacao Trader (registered in Liberia), taking the vessel’s 13 crew members prisoner, including the Ukrainian nationals.
According to Dryad Global, an international maritime navigation portal, the incident occurred after the ship left the port of Lome in Togo. After it traveled for 200 miles, the ship was seized by 8 armed militants who had approached the tanker by a boat.
As Ukraine’s foreign ministry noted, the assault took place unprecedentedly far away from the shore, in a maritime zone considered safe from pirates.
As a result of talks between the vessel’s owner and the pirates, the Ukrainian sailors and their Russian colleagues were freed and handed over to the Nigerian military on Aug. 20.
Four days later, the Nigerian government transferred the sailors to the Ukrainian diplomatic mission in the country.
The Gulf of Guinea and the Somali coast remain among the world’s most problematic aquatic areas in terms of sea piracy. According to the International Maritime Bureau, part of the International Chamber of Commerce, the year 2018 alone saw at least 50 confirmed pirate attacks against commercial vessels in the region, as well as 21 attempted assaults.
Ukrainian sailors often end up being captured.
As recently as May 24, another 8 Ukrainian crew members of the Portuguese container ship MSC TALIA F were freed from pirate captivity after a pirate attack in the Gulf of Guinea on March 24.
