The Ukrainian security services are believed to be trying to track down men released from the Marinera tanker after it was re-flagged to Russia and held in Scotland.
The oil tanker, previously known as Bella-1 was seized by the U.S Coast Guard in January and later taken to the Moray Firth.
There the 28 crew members were held for close to three weeks without charges or consular access, raising questions over both the legality of the seizure and their detention.
When the Court of Session attempted to enforce an interdict preventing the extradition of the captain, Georgian Avtandil Kalandadze, it was told that both he and his first officer, Oleksandr Raskovskyy who is Ukrainian, had been taken across the Atlantic.
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Aamer Anwar, who represented the captain's wife, said the sailors had been "basically held hostage" with no attempt to enforce either Scots law or UK extradition laws.
The rest of the men were released on January 26, with two Russian nationals returning to their homeland, but mystery surrounds 16 Ukrainians who were on board when it was seized.
They were processed by Border Force in Inverness and supported in their "onward journey to a location of their choice".
When contacted by The Herald the Ukrainian consulate in Edinburgh said the men had not sought their assistance, nor had they sought assistance from the embassy in London.
The Home Office said it would not comment on individual cases.
Now a report from the Kyiv Independent, citing a top Ukrainian official and two sailors on the ship, says the released men are the subjects of investigations by the SBU, Ukraine's security service.
The sailor said: "They were let go, but the SBU is now looking for them as far as I know."
As they have previously, the sailors denied any knowledge of the ship's involvement in the Russian shadow fleet.
In February the sailors said they had been recruited by a Moldovan company for a ship registered in the Seychelles and were unaware of any Russian connection.
They said that when the ship raised a Russian flag they asked to be disembarked and signed a statement to that effect.
Those spoken to by the Kyiv Independent have maintained that stance.
One said: "Maybe if you are the captain of a ship, you might know. But if you are a regular crew member, what can you know?
"We all live in Europe, and it’s expensive. We need to help at home, to help our parents. We need to support the Ukrainian armed forces.
"I spent eight months on this ship, and for six of them, I had no reason not to work. It was a regular job, nothing different from the other companies I’ve worked for.
"When they told us we were heading toward Venezuela, we said, ‘We will not go.’ They answered, ‘You are going to Curaçao, where all the crew will be changed.
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"Then, after rumours spread that the ship would change its registration to Russian, we also refused. Later, the chase began, which ultimately resulted in the ship’s arrest."
Another said: "I refused my duties from the very first day of the chase. We burned all the documents and deleted the correspondence. What happened on the ship was terrible, because they said they would destroy all the contracts and everything else, they wanted to escape."
Both the Scottish and the UK Governments have repeatedly refused to answer questions about the detainment of the ship.
Last month a legal analysis by two professors at the University of Glasgow raised a number of potential issues and said: "If there are good legal arguments to support the view that the UK authorities lacked jurisdiction to take action affecting the Bella 1, they have not yet been publicly articulated by either the UK or Scottish Governments."
Approached for comment by The Herald on numerous occasions, the former has always referred to a speech given by John Swinney in the Holyrood chamber.
The UK Government has only said: "Deterring, disrupting and degrading the Russian shadow fleet is a priority for the UK Government. Alongside our allies, we are stepping up our response to shadow vessels – and we will continue to do so.”
