An environmental inspector attempted to take a sample of segregated ballast water from the Turkish vessel Ulusoy 8 for chemical analysis at the Yuzhny port on 31 January. The crew did not give permission for the operation. The Ukrainian Federation of Transport Industry Employers’ Deputy Director for Legal Affairs Tetiana Titarenko announced this on her Facebook page.

According to her, the vessel entered the port on 30 January, it was inspected by a reception commission, and it gained access to the customs territory of Ukraine. "There were no ecologists on the commission because, according to the process chart approved by the Cabinet of Ministers resolution No. 451, they are not part of a reception commission,” Titarenko said.

The loading of the vessel started at 15:30 on the same day, but environmental inspectors took interest one day after the arrival of the vessel at the port. "The head the ecology post at the Yuzhny port, Serhii Kidanchuk, remembered and expressed the desire to take samples of segregated ballast water for chemical analysis, about which he informed the ship's agent by telephone and sent his ‘fighter,’ the newly appointed ecologist Oleksandr Moroz, to the port… At the same time, the ecological inspector was unable to reasonably explain to the captain of the Turkish vessel, the port authority, or the port’s stevedores the basis for the decision to take the sample and how exactly he intended to take it," said Titarenko.

She also said that the design of the vessel made it technically impossible to take samples from its tanks (fir this, it is necessary to dismantle the cover of the tank’s manhole).

The vessel's crew refused to allow the inspector to take the water sample. "Specifically what influenced the ecological inspector was a public dismissal of the head of the State Ecological Inspectorate  and the still-fresh scandal in Ilyichevsk, the integrity and credibility of the administrations of the vessel and the port, the fear of getting caught red-handed like his colleagues at Ilyichevsk or the desire to adhere to the law – I cannot say. However, the Ulusoy 8 vessel departed at 21:00 on 31 January without a chemical analysis of its segregated ballast water," she said.