SIMFEROPOL. March 13 (Interfax) - Kyiv's Obolonskiy District Court has ruled to forcibly bring Vladimir Gorbenko, the captain of the Nord fishing vessel, which is registered at the port of Kerch, Crimea, to the next court session, which is scheduled in a month.
Gorbenko did not turn up in court on March 13, and prosecutors ask the court to rule on his detention.
"The court finds the prosecutor's arguments unconvincing that Gorbenko is deliberately in hiding in efforts to avoid punishment," Gorbenko's Kyiv lawyer Dmytro Shcherbina told Interfax.
The next court session is scheduled for April 13.
On March 25, 2018, the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine detained the Nord and its ten-member crew in the Sea of Azov.
Its captain was accused of violating the rules for sailing to and from what Kyiv calls occupied Ukrainian territory with a view to harming the country's interests and illegal fishing on industrial scale.
A court in Kherson released the captain on a personal surety. During the preliminary inquiry, Gorbenko stayed with relatives in Melitopol in the Zaporizhzhia region.
Two Nord crewmembers returned to Crimea in April 2018, leaving Ukraine via Belarus. In October the other seven were swapped for seven fishermen from two Ukrainian vessels, the YaMK-0041 and the YaOD-2105, who were caught poaching off Crimea in May and August 2018.
Last fall, Russia and Ukraine began talks for the return of Nord Captain Gorbenko and YaMK-0041 Captain Viktor Novytsky.
Gorbenko went missing in late January 2019, his lawyers and a representative of the ship owner company said. Relatives of this Crimean resident in Melitopol reported his disappearance to Ukrainian police, and Gorbenko was registered in the section "missing citizens" on the Ukrainian Interior Ministry website on February 4.
The captain, who did not contact his lawyers, was found in Crimea. His interview was published in the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper on February 11.
"I did not have any restrictions on returning home. I crossed the border legally with my Russian passport," Gorbenko said.
He said on the Rossiya-24 (VGTRK) TV channel that he is ready to attend Kyiv court sessions via a video link-up. This option did not suit the Ukrainian side.