Estonia Released the Banana Ship with a Russian Crew That Was Stormed at Night 0 14

The vessel left the port of Muuga at 2:15 AM, reported the Tax and Customs Board (TCB). The crew of the vessel consists of 23 citizens of the Russian Federation.

Russia reacted nervously to the detention. The chairman of the State Duma Committee on Defense, member of the Marine Board of the Government of Russia Andrei Kartapolov stated that now all Estonian vessels in the Baltic Sea risk not reaching their ports of destination.

As reported by bb.lv, on February 3, Estonian security forces conducted a large-scale operation to detain the vessel. The operation involved 50 special forces, a helicopter, and ships of the Republic's Navy.

The vessel was directed to the port of Muuga, where the containers were removed from the board and inspected. The Tax and Customs Board suspected that drugs were hidden in containers filled with boxes of bananas.

"Information about suspicious containers was received from our international partners. In cooperation with the special unit K-komando, customs officers who boarded the vessel conducted a document check and established the location of the suspicious containers," said Vitaly Zayarin, head of the drug enforcement department of the TCB.

"The suspicious sea containers contained boxes of bananas from Ecuador. A very similar situation led to a record find in 2022, when during customs control based on information from partners in the Netherlands and Finland, 2.5 tons of cocaine were discovered among boxes of bananas from Ecuador," he added.

This time, nothing was found.