A Ukrainian ship crew member tried to sink a yacht owned by the CEO of a Russian weapons manufacturer in protest over the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
via Newsweek:
The 55-year-old Ukrainian who was identified as D. Taras O. tried to sink the boat by flooding its engine room by opening a large valve as well as another one in a different part of the boat, the Majorca Daily Bulletin reported.
The yacht, called Lady Anastasia, reportedly belongs to Alexander Mijeev, the Russian CEO of Rosoboronexport—a Russian military weapons company.
The man then shut down the electricity and closed the fuel valves, before asking three Ukrainian crew members to leave the ship. The other crew members, who later reported him to authorities, called him crazy and asked him to close the valve that was causing the leak, according to El País. The yacht was left with a destroyed engine room.
The man’s motivation to sink the yacht? Ukraine was being attacked, he said, by missiles manufactured by the owner’s company.
The 55-year-old worked for 10 years as a chief engineer on the yacht, which is worth €7 million ($7.8 million) and stretches nearly 48 meters at the Mallorca port, according to El País.
When he appeared before a judge on Sunday, the 55-year-old said that he doesn’t regret his actions and that he “would do it again.”
“I watched the news about the war. There was a video of a helicopter attack on a building in Kyiv. The armaments used are produced by the yacht owner’s company. They were attacking innocents,” he told the judge, according to the Majorca Daily Bulletin.
He was released on charges of his actions, which he said he committed as material damage and had no intention of human damage.
The chief engineer’s attempt came amid an invasion led by Putin late Wednesday after he decided to launch a “special military operation” to “demilitarize and de-Nazify” Ukraine.
The first missile strikes launched across the country were reported by Ukrainian authorities shortly after Putin made his announcement. Russian ground and air forces were seen advancing into territories controlled by the government in Kyiv, with an Interior Ministry source reporting hundreds of casualties after the first missile attack.
The Russian invasion unfolded a wide-scale impact among civilians as over 300,000 Ukrainians fled the country in search of safety, according to the latest data by the UN Refugee Agency. Experts are expecting this figure to rise as Russian troops continue to move forward in other parts of the country.
We wish he would’ve succeeded in sinking that yacht.
