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Sweden Arrests Chinese Commander of Russian Sanctioned Shadow Fleet Ship
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Swedish authorities arrested the commander of a cargo vessel suspected of operating as part of the Russian shadow fleet after boarding the ship in territorial waters outside the city of Trelleborg, SVT reported on May 4.
The operation took place at 14:00 local time and targeted the Jin Hui, a 182-meter ship currently placed on the European Union, United Kingdom, and Ukrainian sanctions lists. Mattias Lindholm, a press officer for the Swedish Coast Guard, confirmed that the ship’s commander, a Chinese citizen, was taken into custody following the intervention.
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Minister of Civil Defence Carl-Oskar Bohlin stated on the X platform that the boarding “took place in Swedish territorial waters just outside Trelleborg at 14 o’clock and took place in close cooperation between the Coast Guard and the relevant authorities.”
Kustbevakningen har i dag bordat ytterligare ett fartyg som misstänks ingå i den ryska skuggflottan.
— Carl-Oskar Bohlin (@CarlOskar) May 3, 2026
Fartyget heter Jin Hui och misstänks för att segla under falsk flagg. Det finns frågor kring bristande sjöduglighet och avsaknad av försäkringar. Jin Hui står på EU:s,… pic.twitter.com/e9h8ApwBpB
The boarding was conducted without incident and involved resources from Police Aviation and the National Task Force, SVT wrote.
“The board was carried out according to plan on Sunday,” Swedish police noted in a statement. “The police mission has been to secure the ship with specially trained operators from the National Task Force.”
The Swedish Coast Guard had been tracking the Jin Hui for some time before the operation. According to MarineTraffic data, reviewed by SVT, the unladen vessel was sailing under a Syrian flag with an unknown destination. However, the Coast Guard suspects the ship was operating under a false flag.
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“We suspect violations of the Maritime Act for a lack of seaworthiness. It is against this background that we have chosen to intervene,” Lindholm stated.
The incident is the fifth time Swedish authorities have boarded a vessel in a short period. As of April 4, Coast Guard criminal investigators remain on board the Jin Hui to continue their probe.
The intervention near Trelleborg follows a pattern of Swedish crackdowns on illicit Russian maritime operations. Sweden’s prosecution authority had recently announced the confiscation of another cargo vessel, the Caffa, which was detained in the same waters.
Operating under a false Guinean flag, the Caffa was sanctioned by Ukraine for loading and transporting stolen Ukrainian grain from the temporarily occupied port of Sevastopol in Crimea.
Following a formal request for international legal assistance, Swedish prosecutors confiscated the ship pending a court decision on whether to transfer the vessel to another state as part of criminal proceedings.
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