“After April 16, 2022 it is prohibited to give access to the ports located in the territory of the Union to any vessel registered under the flag of Russia”. It is the decision adopted by the European Council and embodied in regulation 2022/576, with which Brussels took another step towards the bolt of the community market to Russian capital. It did so after having closed, on the last day of February, access to airspace and after multiple seizures of megayates and mansions of oligarchs related to Vladimir Putin.
But In the Galician fleet, there was a very particular case: two vessels owned by Vigo and flying the Russian flag – with Murmansk registration – remained in limbo. Its about Severnaya Zemlya y Novaya Zemlya (Northern Land and New Land), from Pesquera Vaqueiro, attached to the Vigo Shipowners Cooperative (ARVI). An exception in the regulation will allow them to continue operating as before, in Galician ports.
The second, in fact, docked this Sunday at the Frigoríficos del Morrazo dock in Cangas. The Ministry of Development, which is responsible for setting the guidelines for both the Maritime Captaincy and the port authorities, sent instructions to validate the entry of ships such as Vaqueiro’s as an exception. “The vessels included jointly in the scope of general application of the Solas, Marpol and Cargo Lines Conventions and, therefore, do not affect neither fishing vessels or vessels nor gross tonnage cargo vessels (GT ) less than 500”.
In the decision itself adopted by the Community Executive Exceptions were included, and ships such as merchant ships loaded with strategic raw materials (natural gas, oil, copper, nickel or palladium), transporting sensitive goods (pharmaceutical, agricultural, fertilizers) or for humanitarian purposes. All vessels at risk due to an emergency have always had free passage to European ports.
Although the Cyrillic names on the hull may mislead, the fishing boats Severnaya Zemlya y Novaya Zemlya they are old acquaintances for Galician fishing. Built two decades ago at Armón Vigo and Astilleros Gondán as Arneles Beach y Harnesses, respectively, in 2007 they were exported and renamed. They are operated by the Zakharov Vaqueiro company, based in the port city of Murmansk.
It was the Spanish government that, after closing the airspace to planes, urged Brussels to make the same decision with ships, a decision that Downing Street had already taken for British waters. At that time, as reported by FARO DE VIGO, a newspaper that belongs to the same group as this medium, it did not clarify what was going to happen to the Pesquera Vaqueiro vessels.
seizures
Vigo is one of the reference ports for scales of large pleasure boats. As the Sailing Yacht A, a $500 million sci-fi yacht owned by energy and fertilizer tycoon Andrey Melnichenko. Now he is being held in Trieste (Italy). It has also been visited by Luna115 meters long, and that Roman Abramovich sold for about 400 million dollars.
On Spanish soil there is also the Tango, yacht of the billionaire aluminum businessman Viktor Vekselberg, a personal friend of Vladimir Putin. The latter was seized in a joint operation by the Civil Guard with the US agencies FBI and HSI (Homeland Security Investigations). But have been many boats of oligarchs blocked throughout Europe. UK seized the Phivalued at about 50 million dollars, and did the same with the Axiomin this case in Gibraltar. Crescent -unknown owner-, Valerie (by Sergei Chemezov), Lena (Gennady Timchenko)o True love (Igor Sechin) have also been seized.