General Discussion

[Anonymous]

MOSCOW, August 9 (RIA Novosti) - A cargo ship with Russian crew has gone missing off Portugal's Atlantic coast, the Russian maritime journal Sovfrakht reported on Sunday.

The dry cargo vessel, the Arctic Sea, was expected to arrive at the Algerian port of Bejaia on August 4.

However, "the vessel has literally disappeared since July 28: there is no communication, and neither the ship-owners nor the relatives [of crewmembers] nor Lloyd's have any information about its whereabouts," Sovfrakht editor Mikhail Voitenko said.

On July 24, people who claimed to be police stopped the Arctic Sea in the Baltic Sea, tied up the crew and searched the vessel for 12 hours. The Arctic Sea resumed its voyage after they left the ship.

According to media reports, the Arctic Sea, which flies the Maltese flag, had a crew of 13 people as of late March.

[beast]

Owner of ship feared hijacked requests Russian help
19:4511/08/2009
MOSCOW, August 11 (RIA Novosti) - The Finnish owner of a cargo ship, crewed by Russians, that went missing off Portugal's Atlantic coast on August 1 has asked Russia to assist in tracing the vessel, which may have been hijacked.

"The Solchart company and me personally are counting, above all, on Russia's assistance in the search for the missing vessel and its crew," Viktor Matveyev, the company's executive director, said.

The dry cargo vessel, the Arctic Sea, was due to arrive at the Algerian port of Bejaia on August 4.

According to crew members, on July 24, masked men claiming to be police stopped the Arctic Sea in the Baltic Sea and tied up the crew, after which they searched the vessel.

The crew is reported to have said the men then left the ship after the 12-hour ordeal and the Arctic Sea resumed its voyage.

The Times newspaper cited a Maritime and Coastguard Agency representative as saying "We thought we had spoken to a member of the crew but of course it could have been someone with a gun pointed at their head or a hijacker."

Mark Clark said that the ship had last been seen by a Portuguese patrol vessel.

"This is the last information we have on the ship. Where she is now no one knows," Clark said, adding "no one can recall a hijacked ship being taken through the [English] channel."

According to media reports, the Arctic Sea, which flies the Maltese flag, had a crew of 13 sailors on board as of late March.



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I wonder who those 12 men were?

[beast]

Russian navy denies pursuing disappeared ship in Atlantic
Russia's navy denied reports that one of its frigates was following a ship in the Atlantic Ocean similar to the merchant vessel which disappeared last month
Thursday, 13 August 2009 17:13


Russia's navy on Thursday denied reports that one of its frigates was following a ship in the Atlantic Ocean similar to the merchant vessel which disappeared last month after passing through the English Channel.

Mikhail Boytenko, editor of Russia's Sovfracht maritime journal, told the Vesti-24 news channel that the navy's frigate, Ladny, was pursing a similar vessel south of Gibraltar.

"This information is based on the personal views of a private individual and is untrue," a spokesman for Russia's navy said.

The Kremlin has ordered Russian warships to join the hunt for the 4,000-tonne, 98-metre bulk carrier Arctic Sea, whose mysterious fate has baffled national maritime authorities across Europe and North Africa.

The Maltese-registered vessel, carrying a cargo of timber worth $1.3 million, was supposed to have docked on Aug. 4 in the Algerian port of Bejaia.

Reuters

[beast]

MOSCOW – The Arctic Sea, a Russian-operated ship missing in the Atlantic, might be the victim of one of the first true hijackings at sea in Europe since the Barbary pirates were defeated in the 19th century.

But analysts are skeptical that a Somalia-style attack on shipping is possible in modern Europe. Speculation in the Russian media has turned to alternative explanations: Nuclear-weapons smuggling? An intermafia dispute with the ship’s crew as pawns? Old-fashioned insurance fraud? All have been posited.

One expert even hypothesizes that the mysterious disappearance of the Arctic Sea, which left Finland two weeks ago with 15 Russian seamen and a load of timber bound for Algeria, might be a bit of extreme political theater to convince Russia’s parliament to give its president expanded military powers.

The ship, whose cargo is worth about $2 million, was supposed to have arrived in Algiers on Aug. 4, but hasn’t been heard from since being spotted by a Portuguese maritime patrol plane near that country’s coast around August 1.

The vessel appears to have vanished into thin air, a curious affair that has engaged the attention of Finnish police, Swedish investigators, Interpol, and the Russian Navy. The story is complicated by reports that the ship was possibly boarded in Swedish waters by a group of masked men who identified themselves as “Swedish antidrug police.”

Boarding party

The captain of the Maltese-flagged Arctic Sea reported that the crew was tied up for 12 hours, but later released unharmed. The boarders, he said, sped away on rubber speed boats. Swedish authorities say they are perplexed by the incident, and are looking into it.

Viktor Matveyev, managing director of Solchart, the Helsinki-based company that operates the Arctic Sea, told the official Russian news agency RIA-Novosti that he had no idea where his ship is. “In this situation, anything’s possible,” he said. “Still, it’s hard to believe that this [piracy] could happen in Swedish territorial waters.”

Finnish police are reportedly looking into the possibility that the Arctic Sea was carrying more than timber when it departed Finland. Russian press reports have noted that the ship spent two weeks in the Russian Baltic port of Kaliningrad earlier in July, a place that is a notorious haven for smugglers.

Natalya Gracheva, a Russian journalist who specializes in maritime reporting, told the state-run Russia Today network that the disappearance probably involved a secret cargo. “It is definitely a criminal act performed for gain,” she said. “It is most probably a continuation of the attack that took place in Sweden. It is possible that the offenders never left the ship. It’s also impossible that the ship would sink – we would see piles of timber. And if there was an explosion, it would have been recorded. The ship is thought to be heading to Africa now, since it will be easier for the hijackers to sell the cargo in countries with weaker controls.”

Political intrigue

But Russian security expert Pavel Felgenhauer, a columnist with the opposition weekly Novaya Gazeta, suggests the affair has a whiff of political intrigue about it. He points to the English-language news page of the Kremlin’s own website for evidence.

On Monday, according to the website, President Dmitry Medvedev submitted a draft law to the State Duma that would entitle the Kremlin, for the first time, to deploy Russian military forces overseas at its discretion “to protect Russian citizens” and to “combat piracy.” The very next day, Mr. Medvedev ordered Russian forces into action to “find, and if need be, free the ship Arctic Sea.”

The Russian Navy has dispatched five warships from its Black Sea fleet, including two nuclear submarines and the guided-missile frigate Ladny, in what the Russian media describes as a major search operation.

“It’s an extraordinary coincidence that Medvedev introduces new legislation that would give him expanded powers to fight piracy, and the next day this opportunity arises,” says Mr. Felgenhauer. “It certainly comes in handy to illustrate the Kremlin’s case,” he says.

[beast]

Mystery remains over cargo vessel
15 Aug 2009 14:55 BST

Mystery still surrounds a missing Russian-manned cargo ship, with a sighting off Africa's Cape Verde islands still to be confirmed.

The Arctic Sea, with 15 Russian crew members on board, was last sighted in the Bay of Biscay on 30 July.

Cape Verde officials say they think the ship is 400 nautical miles (740km) off one of the islands.

But Moscow's envoy to Cape Verde said he had not been informed of any confirmed sighting.

The 4,000-tonne Maltese-flagged vessel, which had been carrying timber, went off radar after passing through the English Channel.



There has been huge speculation over the reason for its disappearance, ranging from pirates to a mafia dispute to a commercial quarrel.

AFP news agency quoted Finnish police as saying a ransom demand had been made of the ship's Finnish owners, Solchart Management.

A source linked to the Cape Verde coastguard told AFP the Arctic Sea was outside its territorial waters.

The coastguard was informing maritime officials about the ship's movements, the source said, adding: "When the ship enters our jurisdiction, we will decide in consultation with our partners what actions to take."

Some reports have put the ship 400 nautical miles north of the Cape Verdean island of Sao Vicente.

French intelligence said it had found a ship matching the Arctic Sea's description in the area.

The Portuguese military would not confirm one of its planes had flown over the vessel.

However, the Russian ambassador to Cape Verde, Alexander Karpushin, said he had not been officially informed of the sighting and told Russia's RAI agency the sighting was "not true".

Tom Wilkerson, chief executive officer of the US Naval Institute, told the BBC the disappearance raised a number of concerns.

"What we're looking at is a ship that's over 4,000 tonnes, with no transponder working, that now all of the world's searching capability has not been able to find.

"Just because the ship doesn't appear to have anything on it of value doesn't mean that someone can't place something there that could be very valuable, and also very dangerous."

Last known contact

Carrying timber reportedly worth $1.8m (£1.1m), the Arctic Sea sailed from Finland and had been scheduled to dock in the Algerian port of Bejaia on 4 August.

The crew reported being boarded by up to 10 armed men as the ship sailed through the Baltic Sea on 24 July, but the intruders were reported to have left the vessel on an inflatable boat after 12 hours.

There are also reports of the ship being attacked a second time off the Portuguese coast. However the ship's operators said they had no knowledge of the incident and Portugal said the ship was never in its territorial waters.

The last known contact with the crew was when the Arctic Sea reported to British maritime authorities as it passed through the Dover Strait.

On Friday, the European Union Commission spokesman Martin Selmayr said: "From information currently available it would seem that these acts, such as they have been reported, have nothing in common with 'traditional' acts of piracy or armed robbery at sea."

[beast]

Russia says missing Arctic Sea found
Mon, 17 Aug 2009 14:28:23 GMT
Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov says the navy has found a missing Finnish ship shrouded in mystery off the Cape Verde islands and retrieved its Russian crew.

He said a Russian frigate has picked up the 15-strong crew on board the Arctic Sea, adding that they were in good health.

"At 1:00 p.m. Moscow time [09:00 GMT], it was found 300 miles off Cape Verde islands. The crew is alive. They were taken to the Ladny frigate," RIA Novosti news agency quoted Serdyukov as saying Monday.

An investigation had already begun “to identify the circumstances behind the vessel's disappearance and its failure to make radio contact,” he added.

The reported recovery of the Maltese flagged ship which disappeared after crossing the English Channel in late July comes two days after Finnish police confirmed that the ship's operators had received a ransom demand.

Four days before it went off the radar, the ship was attacked by masked gunmen posing as police officers looking for contraband in Swedish waters. The attackers held the crew hostage and searched the ship, leaving hours later without taking anything.

The puzzling disappearance and the attack -- extremely rare in the Baltic Sea -- had sparked speculations over the ship's possible “secret nuclear cargo” aside from its official timber shipment.

A Finnish nuclear safety authority denied the “stupid rumors,” saying the ship had just been subject to an 'unnecessary' radiation test.