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Italian authorities last year detained almost 350 people from different countries transporting illegal migrants from Turkey to Italy. As Kommersant writes, following an investigation conducted by the Italian NGO Arci Porco Rosso and the German Borderline-Europe, it turned out that 14 Russian citizens were among those detained. It is emphasized that this is twice as much as was detained a year earlier.
The publication indicates that the route for illegal migrants by sea from Turkey to Italy was developed by Turkish smugglers as an alternative to the longer route by land through the Balkan Peninsula to the EU countries.
According to the investigation, until February 2022, smugglers preferred to hire Ukrainian sailors. Those, according to the NPO, fled from Ukraine, hiding from the need to go to war in the Donbass. However, with the outbreak of the armed conflict at the end of February 2022, Ukrainian men were banned from leaving the country. According to the authors of the investigation, this was the determining factor in reducing the availability of Ukrainian skippers.
Thus, the smugglers began to teach the operation of small vessels either to illegal migrants themselves, or citizens of Turkey or Egypt, or Russians or citizens of other former Soviet republics.
According to the authors of the report, in 2022, upon arrival in Italy, about 75 citizens of Egypt, 55 of Turkey, 40 of Tunisia, the rest from other countries and regions, including Africa and Asia, were detained for driving courts. The Russians were detained 14 people. Separately, it is emphasized that this data is only for the detained sailors, how many more continue to work is unknown.
In an interview with The Guardian, Italian lawyer Giancarlo Liberati explained that smugglers used to hire some Russians for this job, but then, however, these were isolated cases. And after the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine, and even a little earlier, an increase in the number of Russians hired to manage ships with migrants began to be recorded. Their participation in this work has become downright systematic, Liberati added.
Source: Rosbalt
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