rigorousintuition.ca

Via Johnson's Russia List.
The interesting thing here, for me anyway, is the conjecture that there was a need for the ship to be hijacked in order to stop it. Voitenko however keeps shifting the story.


BBC Monitoring
Journalist: I was given hours to leave Russia because of missing vessel story
Excerpt from report by Gazprom-owned, editorially independent Russian radio station Ekho Moskvy on 3 September

(Presenter) Another well-known journalist has had to leave Russia, this time because of the controversy surrounding the Arctic Sea dry cargo vessel. Editor in chief of the Morskoy Byulleten - Sovfrakht publication Mikhail Voytenko has revealed that he was forced to take a decision to leave the country. He said that certain people who worked in the interests of the state had warned him of danger. Darya Polygayeva has the details. (Passage omitted)

(Correspondent) Mikhail Voytenko himself has said that an unknown man telephoned him and said without mincing his words that the news about the disappearance of the Arctic Sea could cost him dear, and it would be better for the journalist to leave his home country for several months.

(Voytenko, over the telephone) They called and told me to leave. I asked how much time I had, and the reply was: a few hours. I asked, how long should I be gone for? I was told: three or four months. I was told explicitly that it was, of course, about the Arctic Sea.

(Correspondent) Voytenko explained that certain influential people had been displeased with the very fact that he had publicized the disappearance of the vessel, and not with his subsequent comments. In these, by the way, he said that the dry cargo vessel had been carrying something that the public must never learn about.

The people whose path you crossed with this news are very displeased with you, Voytenko quotes the unknown caller as saying. (Quote continues) Criminal proceedings will be launched against you. We are a different lot, we work for the state, and we've already had more scandal with the Arctic Sea than we can handle. If you are jailed now, it'll be another scandal, which is the last thing we need (Quote ends). The caller made it clear that, should the journalist not leave the country, he would be jailed - I quote - and they'll have no trouble finding the article under which to charge you.

Voytenko said he decided not to turn to law-enforcement bodies over the case, but to follow the unknown caller's instructions instead. I booked a ticket for the first flight and flew to Istanbul, the journalist said, adding: I have no flat or family in Moscow, so fleeing was easy.

(Presenter) Meanwhile, in an interview to the Infox.ru online publication, Voytenko said that, among other things, the caller mentioned the journalist's criticism of senior politicians. I quote: You went after (Russian envoy to NATO Dmitriy) Rogozin and (former Liberal Democrat MP, now A Just Russia member Aleksey) Mitrofanov. It was extremely unwelcome - end of quote.

Meanwhile Aleksey Mitrofanov has told us he is sorry that Mikhail Voytenko had to leave. At the same time, Mitrofanov pointed out that the journalist's view on the capture of the Arctic Sea often contradicted Russia's official policy, which Mitrofanov himself regards as the only correct one.

(Mitrofanov) It's a pity that an independent source will now be gone.

The state was presenting its position, and naturally any dissenting views annoyed it. This annoyance may have been relayed to him, and he assessed the risks so that he decided to leave.

A certain operation was under way, so one has to explain that there had been an act of piracy, and so a (Russian) combat ship (then) seized the Maltese vessel (i.e. the Arctic Sea) because it had been the pirates' target; otherwise, it would turn out that the seizure of a foreign vessel (by Russian naval ships) was altogether illegal. So Russia will insist strongly that there was an act of piracy - and it is right to do so.

Voytenko said now one thing, now another, he caused a what-do-you-call-it, so maybe at the time it did cause annoyance.

Dam photos:
http://englishrussia.com/?p=5141

PMO cites 'secret activities' behind PM's absence | Israel | Jerusalem Post

AFP: Plot thickens over Israeli PM's secret trip

Missing channel pirate ship carried Russian arms for Iran - Times Online

Depending on what version, the S-300 is a system comprising a number of vehicles and radars. We are talking big trucks an a lot of components. Yes, it could fit on the ship. If Russia, the state, wanted to sell to Iran they can just fill the existing contract. It's a defensive missile anyway. I hope Iran gets them.

Lavrov denies outright the Mossad angle and that weapons were on board. I think I believe him but it sure seems like something's going on and so far no version of the story that I've seen makes much sense.

I don't think we'll know what this is about for a long time. Imagine if 9-11 happened out at sea. The best we're likely to get is a story that answers all the questions, or most of the key ones.

Maltese investigators will be boarding soon according to Novosti.

About the dam, opinion and evidence seems to be converging on poorly maintained equipment as the cause of the dam explosion, most focuses on an unbalanced turbine.

FYI...

Sep 12, 2009
Arctic Sea - a serial absentee
By John Helmer

MOSCOW - Port logs for the MV Arctic Sea, the small Turkish-built, Russian-owned vessel recently reported at the center of an alleged piracy and extortion attempt, reveal that the timber-carrier has been making regular voyages between Finnish ports and either Algerian or French Mediterranean ports for the past three years. However, the disappearance reported to have occurred between July 24 and August 24, triggering a spate of feverish speculation in Tel Aviv and London about missile smuggling, appears not to be the first time the Arctic Sea has gone missing; or at least gone absent from the maritime record known as the international Automatic Identification System (AIS).

Each year recently, according to AIS records, the vessel appears to be missing from the logs in the Mediterranean for up to 20 days at a time. In April this year, the Arctic Sea is missing from AIS port-call records between April 1, when it transited the Gibraltar


Straits, moving east, and April 11, when it returned through the straits, moving west. A similar gap in the log records appeared a year earlier, between February 13, 2008, when the Arctic Sea sailed east past Gibraltar into the Mediterranean, and 20 days later, on March 4, when it transited the Gibraltar Straits moving west.

In 2007, the gap in the logs appears between April 26, when the vessel entered the Mediterranean, and May 14, when it exited. In all cases, the vessel appears to have taken on cargo at Loviisa and Kotka (Finland), and Tallinn (Estonia).

Maritime industry experts say that gaps in AIS records and port logs may not be of any significance, and don't necessarily warrant suspicion. According to one source, AIS coverage is not universal, and AISLive must obtain the data from traffic management authorities, not all of whom make them public. He speculates that a "missing" period of 20 days "between Gibraltar transits would fit perfectly with the vessels voyaging to Algeria or another North African port (Egypt also buys a lot of timber from Russia, Baltic states and Finland); discharging; and returning back to Gibraltar. North African ports are not renowned for the speed of discharge."

Although the Arctic Sea has regularly identified port-calls at such Algerian ports as Bejaia and Oran, it has not been identified over the past several years at other North African country ports. The expert source cautions against speculation:

AIS is intended for ships to be able to identify each other, and for VTMS [Vehicle Traffic Management Systems] to recognize ships. It is not, and was never intended to be, a universal tracking system; its use for that purpose is highly flawed. Not every port is equipped with a VTMS or an AIS system, and so there will be no reports available when the ship calls to those ports. There will also be times when even where a port AIS system is in place it will be inoperative because of breakdown of the system or of individual ships' AIS. There would also be good commercial reasons for a ship to switch its AIS off so as to avoid its position being known to charterers.

Captain Victor Karpenkov, the Arkhangelsk-based manager of the Russian division of Solchart, owner of the Arctic Sea', said the gaps in the AIS records are "yet another hoax, after the claim that the ship was carrying the S-300 anti-missile defense system. I won't even comment on this, because obviously this sounds foolish". He was asked to say where the Arctic Sea was in the three periods that are missing AIS locations. He referred the questions to Solchart headquarters in Helsinki.

In Helsinki, two of the registered owners of the Solchart group, Victor Matveyev and Vladimir Voronov, were also asked to say where the Arctic Sea was during the three "missing" periods identified by AIS. Voronov said: "I am not in a position to tell you anything", and referred calls to Matveyev. Asked twice to identify the ports of call in the three periods, Matveyev hung up the telephone without answering.

The Russian authorities have sought this week to end speculation about the Arctic Sea with official releases. This week, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov termed reports in the Israeli and UK press, claiming the vessel had been carrying a secret cargo of missiles for Iran, "a complete lie". The Investigation Committee of the federal prosecutor-general announced that "investigators have thoroughly searched the cargo on board the ship, and found only lumber. No cargo has been found except that registered in the consignment log." The vessel is due to arrive at Novorossiysk this week.

Kaliningrad sources add that it was improbable that secret cargoes could have been loaded at Kaliningrad, where the Arctic Sea was berthed at the start of July, because getting such cargoes from Russia into Kaliningrad would require overland transit by rail through European Union and Lithuanian monitoring. When the Arctic Sea was berthed at Kaliningrad between July 1 and 17 - according to the AIUS logs - it was the first time recorded for the vessel at that port in the past five years.

Speculation that the Arctic Sea had disappeared, or was missing, as the media reported last month, have been rejected by a range of Russian government sources, as well as by the maritime authorities in Malta, where the vessel is registered. What this means is that the secret services of several governments were not as blinded by the lack of AIS plots as the media were.

Dmitry Rogozin, Russia's Ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), has pointed out that the press speculation was "nothing more than Russophobia. Kaliningrad is rubbish, too. If the Finns packed guided missiles in along with the timber, that would be up to them. Any information vacuum always tends to be filled with the wildest rumors."

According to Rogozin, from August 11, NATO and Russia were jointly cooperating in tracking the vessel by satellite and other means. "The next day the head of our military liaison group with NATO, General Victor Sinoyev, rang me. NATO colleagues had sent him the coordinates of a ship they believed to be the Arctic Sea. I immediately passed the data on to the head of the General Staff and the head of the fleet in Moscow. They tallied with the data our own people had gathered by then. Then we refined the coordinates with NATO on a daily basis: the speed of the vessel, the direction. The Arctic Sea was steering towards Brazil but suddenly changed course at the Cape Verde islands and headed full steam for the African coast. We assumed the pirates were headed for Senegal, Gambia or Guinea-Bissau. It was our task to stop them from reaching the coast," Rogozin said.

The Russian government officials have had more experience than their NATO counterparts in the difficulties of rescuing seamen held hostage on the African shore, because two episodes remain fresh in memory. Nigerian government officials held 12 Russian crewmen hostage for two years after they had been taken off the African Pride, an oil tanker accused of involvement in local government-sponsored oil smuggling. They were released in December 2005 after a secret ransom was paid to the Nigerians. In August 2006, Guinean government officials briefly detained in Conakry port the Luchegorsk, also an oil tanker, and its 19-man crew, with the aim of extracting a ransom.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/KI12Ag01.html

That article is a good round up of the story. The only thing it lacks are the Perez meeting (He collapsed recently,must be Russian poison) and now the Netanyahu meeting with the Russians. I don't even know if these events are related.

If they went to Russia to clear an attack it looks like it hasn't worked because Putin, just a day ago, reiterated his rejection of the idea.

FYI, this is dated August.

UPDATE ON THE ARCTIC SEA AFFAIR
According to the latest information from our sources in Ukraine, the Arctic Sea

did not transport any kind of weaponry. However, her cargo included five tons of Afghani heroin.

This shipment was bought by an organized criminal group of Russian military intelligence (GRU) officers allegedly from Mr. Makhmadsaid Ubaiduloev, the Speaker of the Upper House of Tajikistan's Supreme Assembly. The criminals planned to transfer the shipment in the Bay of Biscay to a ship owned by a group of Basques.

The extremist leadership of Ukraine military intelligence had learned about this operation of GRU officers and transmitted this information to their competitors --another GRU crime group engaged in drug and arms smuggling so that they could intercept this heroin shipment. They also shared this information with their partners in the US and British intelligence community and government who are engaged in a secret war against Russia.

Their plan was to use the seizure of the Arctic Sea by the drug dealers for a political show. The public exposure of drug dealers from the GRU and their border patrol accomplices would be a huge blow for Russia's international reputation. This was averted by the bold and concerted action of the Russian Navy. But the Russian authorities have found themselves in an awkward and compromising situation. The the Arctic Sea affair is a dramatic confirmation of the tremendous scope of corruption and crime in Russian military, secret services and government that threatens the existence of the Russian state no less than its external enemies.

FOR INFORMATION
Both Mister Ubaiduloev and the Tajik system of narcotrafficking are not unfamiliar to the group of senior officers of Ukrainian military intelligence that includes Generals Vladimir Filin, Alexei Likhvintsev, and Leonid Kosyakov all of whom “specialized” on Afghan heroin trade since the early 1980s.

August 26, 2009

Another, from the same site:

Natasha Barch and Vadim Stolz
FROM THE ARCTIC SEA TO THE TITANIC?
NB. Vadim, what do your sources say about the strange voyage of the Arctic Sea and the way it was spinned by Vladimir Filin of Ukrainian military intelligence (GUR) and the Russian “investigative journalist” Yulia Latynina?

VS. To put it briefly, it was a very dangerous provocation, inspired and organized by a group of US militarists with the help of their partners in the GUR. The provocation was preceded by a meeting in Washington between Filin and Vice-President Biden. It had followed their meetings in Kiev during Biden's recent official visit there. We don't know any details about these meetings but the way the whole affair was plotted is pretty clear by now. Here is my reconstruction.

Filin and his Far West LLC partners Ruslan Saidov and Anton Surikov (aka US citizen Gregory Orloff) are former senior officers of Soviet and Russian military intelligence, who for many years were involved in both illegal and legal international arms trade. (I mention Saidov and Surikov because they accompanied Filin during that meeting with Biden in Washington). Their use of the ill-fated ferry “Estonia” for arms and drugs smuggling was one episode of their international activities relevant to the Arctic See case. In the 2000s they became active in anti-Russian politics—Filin from his base in Ukraine, Saidov—in the Caucasus and Central Asia, and Surikov—about everywhere. In this capacity they were brought into the fold of what we call the intelligence cabal—the assortment of extremist Russophobic elements in the intelligence, military, and political establishments of the United States, Britain, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, and some other countries. Before this US administration, their “Dear Leader” was Vice-President Cheney and his office. Their partners in the US were and still are Fritz Ermarth and Robert Gates. Filin and his partners hoped that McCain and Palin would win the presidency and in the spring of 2008 they developed relations (through Ermarth) with Robert Kagan and Randy Scheunemann, McCain's senior advisor on international affairs. At that time General Filin controlled the flow of military-political intelligence from Ukrainian intelligence to the Georgians who didn't have serious intelligence capacities. This gave him the opportunity to manipulate the decision-making process in Tbilisi.

So in August of 2008 after his meetings in Washington Filin went to Georgia and several days later the Georgians, supported by Ukrainian military specialists and mercenaries attacked South Ossetia. 1 The goal of the Ukrainians and their US partners was to create a military-political crisis that would allow the hawkish McCain to win presidency and to produce a new cold war against Russia, preventing further reapprochement between Russia and Europe. We now think that the Georgian-Ukrainian provocation in South Ossetia had also another objective of making Obama to choose Joe Biden as his running mate. In this way, Biden owes one to Filin. The adventure in South Ossetia misfired. Nobody expected that the Russians would punish the Georgians so swiftly and convincingly.

The defeat in the Caucasus made the Ukrainian extremists in the military and intelligence to call off the Operation “300 Spartans” that was to begin with the attack on the Russian naval base in Sevastopol, its blockade and the reprisals against the pro-Russian “fifth column” in Ukraine. After several months of changes in Washington, they found their new “Dear Leader” in Biden and their place in the wide international conspiracy against Obama's policy of a 'reset' in US—Russian relations. The Arctic Sea provocation is part of this conspiracy.

NB. Can you describe what actually took place?

VS. Of course, we don't know everything but only a general outline and sequence of events. Russian secret services include a number of groups who are engaged in business and who use their services for the sake of their businesses. This was how the Soviet army and secret services were incorporated in the capitalist restoration—they were given the opportunity to have their piece of the Soviet pie. Usually, it's arms trade, sometimes drugs, like in the case of Filin and his partners who used to be some the largest heroin traders in the Eurasia. These groups operate by having “protection” of the corrupted government officials, including those in the Kremlin; they bribe, they corrupt, they use sometimes violence against each other. That's capitalism, no better no worse than in any other country, their US counterparts included as equally corrupt and violent. So one such group in the military intelligence (GRU) used a group of smugglers they controlled for a shipment of light weaponry to some place in Africa. This cargo was not intended for Iran, Syria or Venezuela as Filin alleged. Another GRU business group, their competitors, tried to intercept this shipment in the Baltic Sea. I have information that the attackers were guided by the Ukrainians, their former GRU colleagues—Generals Filin, Likhvintsev, and Kosyakov. That was the episode described by now in all mass media when a group of men in black raided the ship and held her for 12 hours. Now it is clear that they did not find what they were told was on the ship. The Ukrainians set them up too. What for? Well, they needed to create a “pirate” situation that would justify the ceasure of the ship by the Nato Navy, Americans or British. In that case, the smugglers, their cargo, and the “pirates” would be televised around the world and the crew could be intimidated to tell anything they were asked to. A great juicy anti-Russian scandal was in the cooking—the Russians (are coming!), their secret services, corrupted and bloodied, Russian “pirates” in the center of Europe, good Europeans in the claws of the Russian Bear! I mean this was a feast the West badly needed in the last throes of the “Bailout Bubble.” But the Kremlin felt a rat. It was rather late in the game but not too late. Putin did not allow Nato to have its great victory over “piracy” in the European Sea. But in terms of counter-propaganda the Russians could not do much. Understandably, they could not tell the true story. After all, there were smugglers, there were people from Russian state agencies involved, there were even “pirates” of a sort. They had to allow Filin's and Latynina's lies to continue unopposed. And lies they were. There were no KH-55s Kent and the “biochemical” weapons on the ship heading to Iran. There were no American special forces boarding the ship as Filin has announced. The energetic, no-nonsense maneuver of the Russian Navy made the provocateurs back off the Arctic Sea. The Kremlin was able to avoid the trap prepared by the Ukrainians and their partners in the US.

NB. You mentioned Latynina, the controversial fifth columnist who last year was awarded a medal by the State Department. But Filin's version was also backed by Tarmo Kiuts, the former commander of the Estonian Defense. He claimed that the Arctic Sea had KH-55 on board though, like Filin, he offered no evidence for his allegations.

VB. Kiuts is associated with the FarWest crowd. He helped Roeva to obtain Estonian passport for conducting subversive anti-Russian activities together with Paul Goble, former CIA and State Department “expert” on the “nationalities question” in the Soviet Union. 2 Roeva, Goble, Estonians, and Finns run a racket under the title of “the independent state of Idel-Ural” -- this was an old project of Alfred Rosenberg and his Ministry for the Occupied East in 1941-44. I am not surprised that Kiuts helped out Filin. The partition of Russia into a patchwork of client states is their common dream.

NB. Do you feel that this provocation was a reaction to President Medvedev's recent public thrashing of Yushchenko and his Russophobic policies?

VS. Absolutely, Filin himself wrote about this. But this was not just a knee-jerk emotional reaction to revenge the thrashing of the neo-Banderite regime. The provocation had clear political objectives. We feel that the main goal of this provocation was Israel. The US militarists and Ukrainian extremists want Israeli-Russian relations to deteriorate because of their tactical or, hopefully, strategic differences with the Israelis. Israel would like the United States to “take care” of Iran first and foremost. This is why the Zionist Lobby in the US and in Obama's administration wants a 'reset' in US-Russian relations, including some concessions in regard to Georgia, Ukraine and the anti missile defense system in Europe. The Russophobic elites in Ukraine and Eastern Europe hate Obama (and Jews) for this and want the opposite: the United States must not deflect its frontal attack against Russia for the sake of Israel. They find support in the US military-intelligence cabal that continues to reproduce itself from the days of the Cold War—Brzezinski, Gates, Ermarth, Woolsey, the neocons like Robert Kagan and Joshua Muravchik, the Hudson Institute and the CSIS crowd and you name them. The informational provocation with the Arctic Sea aims to incite animosity to Russia in Israeli society and to breed distrust to Russia in Europe.

NB. To summarize what you've said, there is a wide intentional conspiracy to subvert Obama's policy to normalize the relations between the United States and Russia. A group of US militarists, led by Vice-President Biden uses the extremist top brass of Ukrainian military intelligence (GUR) for black psyops operations against Russia. Is it a fair summary?

http://left.ru/2009/7/arctic189.phtml

=============================

New security video of the dam:
http://englishrussia.com/?p=5165

Putin has said that the entire generating area needs to be rebuilt. I haven't heard any more about the causes and still think it's equipment, negligence type of accident.

NB. To summarize what you've said, there is a wide intentional conspiracy to subvert Obama's policy to normalize the relations between the United States and Russia. A group of US militarists, led by Vice-President Biden uses the extremist top brass of Ukrainian military intelligence (GUR) for black psyops operations against Russia. Is it a fair summary?

Please. Obama selected retrograde russophobes from the git go. He selected them, or did he? In any case there is no indication of any policy change coming from Obama, I mean other than what comes out of his mouth, and honestly who takes that at face value.

Was the cargo ship Arctic Sea really hijacked by pirates?

It began as a curio item on an obscure maritime website and grew into the mystery of the summer. What exactly happened to the Arctic Sea, the enigmatic cargo ship allegedly seized by pirates, not off the wild coast of Somalia but in the genteel EU waters of the Baltic?

Two months after the ship was "hijacked", the answer is now clear – at least according to Russian investigators. Last week, they announced they had finished their probe into one of the biggest maritime puzzles since another ill-starred merchant ship, the Mary Celeste, was found drifting, crewless, in the Atlantic. And according to Moscow, the story is reassuringly simple. Eight armed "pirates" seized the Arctic Sea in the late evening of 24 July, off the coast of Sweden. The pirates told the captain to sail for Africa. The Arctic Sea then slipped through the Channel and "disappeared" on or around 30 July, prompting a frantic international search.

Three weeks later, on 17 August, a Russian naval frigate found and intercepted the boat some 300 miles off the Cape Verde Islands. Russian officers arrested the "pirates", who turned out to be a bunch of ethnic Russians from Estonia and Latvia. They also freed the Arctic Sea's 15 Russian crew members. This bold mission, the Kremlin claims, involving ships, military aircraft and other resources, was a national triumph. There's only one problem with Moscow's version of events: it just doesn't stack up.

Sitting in his Moscow office, Konstantin Baranovsky – lawyer for one of the "pirates" – calmly recounts an alternative reality. His client is Dmitry Bartenev, a 41-year-old sailor who was born and lives in Estonia's capital, Tallinn. His grandfather was a Soviet admiral, his father worked for the Soviet commercial fleet.

Bartenev, his lawyer says, paints a completely different picture of events surrounding the Arctic Sea. There was no hijacking, and he is not a pirate. Instead, Bartenev claims that he and his seven colleagues are harmless "ecologists" who had been working for an unnamed organisation.

"He's told me what that organisation is, but he won't let me disclose it. I don't know why," says Baranovsky.

Bartenev's account, relayed by his lawyer, goes like this. On 24 July, he and his colleagues set off before dawn from the Estonian summer beach resort of Pärnu. Heading off into the grey and choppy Baltic Sea in their soft-hulled inflatable dinghy, they were testing a new GPS unit. But the expedition turned out to be a terrible mistake.

"Suddenly a big wave hit us," Bartenev told his lawyer from prison. "Water flooded our navigation system and broke it. Our engine started to work badly. We lost our bearings. Then it got dark. We saw two ships up ahead of us. One of them was a big passenger liner – but it was going too fast. The other was the Arctic Sea. It had a low hull. We headed for it."

According to Bartenev, the Arctic Sea's crew plucked his seven friends from their stricken boat while he stayed at the wheel. Finally they rescued him, then winched on board his battered dinghy.

"The crew were very friendly. When they realised we were Russians, they took us to the saloon bar and cracked open a bottle of vodka. There was a lot of booze on the Arctic Sea: whisky and strong alcohol of all kinds."

Bartenev says he asked the captain to put them ashore at the nearest port – but the request was refused without explanation. So with no immediate prospect of getting off, they relaxed.

Russian investigators have portrayed their three weeks on board the Arctic Sea as a tense hostage drama. In fact, Bartenev says, it was more like a jolly P&O cruise – with swimming, sunbathing and drinks under a twinkling tropical sky.

"There was a swimming pool; the crew had improvised it at the bottom of the ship. We swam in it. There was also a gym, which we were allowed to use. We spent a lot of time sunbathing," Bartenev says. "We slept in a small cabin. We made friends with several engineers and the cook. He cooked for us together with everybody else."

Crucially, Bartenev says he had no idea that the ship was, by now, at the centre of an international search. Having set off on 22 July from the Finnish port of Jakobstad with a cargo of timber, the Arctic Sea was, according to Moscow, supposed to reach the port of Bejaia in Algeria, on 4 August.

"We didn't realise it had gone missing," Bartenev insists. He and his colleagues did, however, notice that the ship was veering several thousand miles in the wrong direction, down the west coast of Africa. "It got warmer. We were clearly heading south," he told his lawyer.

This muggy equatorial odyssey finally ended at lunchtime on 17 August, when the Russian naval frigate, the Ladny, came alongside. The Arctic Sea's crew had spotted the heavily armed vessel two days previously and, according to Bartenev, its ominous appearance prompted his new companions to nervously break out the vodka again. "We spent the last two nights on board getting drunk with the crew," he explains.

Strangely, the Arctic Sea's captain informed the pursuing Russians that his vessel was North Korean. But this merely delayed the inevitable – an order to come aboard the Ladny. At 11.41am, Russian personnel arrested Bartenev. They took him and the other "pirates" to a military airport on the Cape Verde islands.

From there, he was whisked by Ilyushin Il-76 military plane to Moscow, chucked in jail and charged with kidnapping and piracy. Eleven of the Arctic Sea's sailors were also flown back to Moscow for interrogation, and subsequently barred from talking to the press. The captain, Sergei Zaretsky, and three others stayed behind.

One month later they are still on the boat, which instead of heading back to Russia has been kept out of view somewhere near the Canary Islands. Baranovsky describes Russian investigators' account of the drama as "ludicrous". He poses the obvious question: why would anybody want to hijack a ship full of wood?

"The official version of the incident isn't true. It looks like eight mad guys took a rubber boat, went into the centre of the Baltic Sea, and grabbed a ship full of lumber. It's not only strange, it's unbelievable."

Of course, Bartenev's story also appears dubious in places, especially his claim to be an ecologist. (The sailor has two "Celtic" tattoos on his upper arms – not very Greenpeace.) Nonetheless, his testimony – with its credibly banal account of life on board the Arctic Sea – blows a hole in the official version of events. His suggestion that there was no hijacking, and that the crew were at no stage under duress, is backed by the official investigators' concession that there were, in fact, no weapons on board the Arctic Sea.

A more likely scenario is that Bartenev and his fellow "pirates" were set up. But by whom? Over the past month, speculation has swirled in Russian and British papers that the Arctic Sea was carrying a secret consignment of S-300 anti-aircraft interceptors, destined for Tehran.

Israel is opposed to Iran's acquisition of any anti-aircraft weapon that could thwart an Israeli air strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, and suspicion of a government cover-up grew last week when Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, made a secret dash to Moscow. The Kremlin and Netanyahu's office initially denied that he had visited Russia – only to confirm later that he had surreptitiously dropped in by private jet. A subsequent report in the Sunday Times, citing Israeli intelligence sources, suggested that Israel's intelligence service, Mossad, had set up Bartenev and his gangster friends to "hijack" the ship, to force the Russian government's hand and prevent the S-300s from reaching Iran.

But this version of events, though attractive, is ultimately implausible too. Defence experts sniff that a large, complex anti-aircraft system such as the S-300 simply can't be stuffed inside an old shipping container. "It's bullshit," one expert tells me bluntly. Furthermore, Russia's president, Dmitry Medvedev, told CNN last Sunday that he didn't have a problem with flogging weapons to Iran, so long as they were for defensive purposes. Russia has a contract to supply Tehran with S-300s, but so far has not delivered them.

Speaking from Tallinn, Bartenev's brother Alexey yesterday had another, more prosaic explanation for who "framed" the Arctic Sea eight. Alexey says a mysterious businessman named "Vladimir" recruited Bartenev and his seven friends in mid-July. "My brother had been out of work for six months. Suddenly 'Vladimir' offers him a job. The pay is good, more than €1,000 a month. But there's no written contract."

According to Alexey, Bartenev moved to Pärnu on 16 July. He and a group of friends he'd known since sailing school went on training exercises. They camped on the shore. "Vladimir" also gave them a rubber-hulled boat with an outboard motor. The job apparently involved whizzing round the Baltic Sea, filming tankers as they chucked rubbish overboard – an environmental role, in fact. Alexey is adamant his brother isn't a pirate. "He's not at all aggressive. He's extremely sociable, a lovely guy," he says.

Secret arms deal?

To add to all the intrigue, prosecution documents seen by Baranovsky show that another, shadowy group of visitors also dropped in on the Arctic Sea on 22 July – two days before Bartenev says he conked out in his dinghy. These visitors were a group of between 22 and 24 men who arrived by speedboat, and spent 12 hours on board the Arctic Sea. Some reports say they tied up and blindfolded the crew, having posed as drug enforcement officers; others that they dressed up as Swedish police. What they were doing there is unclear. Based on what he has read, Baranovsky says: "They looked like Russian special forces."

The revelation adds further weight to the most compelling scenario – that someone within Russia's intelligence or security community was using the Arctic Sea to illegally smuggle weapons. The ship had spent several weeks in Kaliningrad, Russia's freewheeling Baltic Sea exclave – the perfect place to hide a secret cargo (as well as stock up on cheap vodka). But the nature of that cargo is unclear: some have suggested rockets, others smart bombs. One Estonian commander says cruise missiles.

Certainly, Russia's spy agencies have an established network of trusted contacts in the Middle East, dating back from when the communist Soviet Union covertly sponsored much of the Arab world with arms and ammunition. And these days, its spy agencies are as much about private profit as intelligence activity. The Kremlin's rival factions have long been locked in a deadly struggle not only for influence, but for revenue streams amounting to billions of dollars.

If the Arctic Sea was carrying an illegal cargo as part of a rogue business deal, it appears that someone in government decided to cover it up. Revelations that Russia had been involved in secret arms trading would be deeply embarrassing. A pretend hijacking appears to have been the solution. It is, after all, the perfect pretext for the Russian authorities to board the Arctic Sea and quietly retrieve its cargo, and to justify a lavish air-and-sea rescue mission.

Earlier this month, the journalist who first broke the story of the Arctic Sea's strange "disappearance" fled Russia after receiving a menacing late-night phone call. Mikhail Voitenko, editor of the online maritime bulletin Sovfracht, said an unidentified caller warned him he was "stepping on the toes of some serious people".

I spoke to Voitenko last week. At the time he was hiding in Istanbul; now he has gone to ground in Bangkok. He recalled how the anonymous caller bluntly informed him that he had offended powerful, possibly criminal, interests – adding that "certain people are out for revenge".

Voitenko said, "I was told: 'These guys are very unhappy with you. But they don't want unpleasantness.'" ­ Instead, he was warned to leave the country. Voitenko said he didn't know the identity of his mystery caller, but hinted that the man who spoke with a "chilling voice" was from the FSB, Russia's many tentacled post-KGB spy agency.

Asked what was really hidden on board the Arctic Sea, Voitenko was guardedly cryptic, replying: "Half of those involved in this were private individuals. But half were linked with the state." And asked why the Arctic Sea affair had snowballed into an international incident, he added dryly: "You don't normally get attacks on ships in the Baltic." Last week, his employers announced that they had fired him; he is now writing for the opposition newspaper, Novaya Gazeta.

Bartenev's current residence, meanwhile, is Moscow's Lefortovo prison, Russia's most notorious lock-up. The prison is under the control of the FSB; only VIPs or those involved in politically sensitive cases get to stay here. On Monday, Baranovsky asked a court to bail Bartenev, arguing that Russia had no jurisdiction when it grabbed him in international waters from a Maltese-registered vessel. Predictably, the judge said no. Bartenev made a virtual appearance in court via a video link. He looked thoroughly fed up, sticking out his elbows in disgust.

Barring a miracle, the "pirates" are destined to remain in prison for a long time. The crew of the Arctic Sea have been told to keep their mouths shut. Russian reporters attempting to talk to the crew's families have met a wall of scared silence. This is not the first time individuals have been sacrificed to the opaque interests of the Russian state; nor is it likely to be the last.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/se ... ia-pirates

So, were the so-called pirates actually set-up to be the patsies for a complex bait-and-switch cat-and-mouse PR stunt, so the Russian State could conveniently 'find' the ship and transfer its illegal cargo thereby avoiding an international incident?

In which case, the Captain had to be in on it since he refused to disembark the 'pirates' after rescuing them.

There are STILL too many holes to make sense of this.

Maybe the Arctic Sea was just a feint distraction 'incident' hiding another ACTUAL smuggling caper, keeping the media focus and international spook attention away from some other ship.

But that too seems impractical and unlikely.

WHO would pay some 7 out-of-work guys 1000 Eu a month to ride around an inflatable boat taking pictures of commercial ships dumping trash?

Wouldn't one of Russia's many mothballed subs be an excellant smuggler's vessel to transport weapons? Well, maybe for cruise missiles but prob not the S300 anti-aircraft system.

Wouldn't China be interested in selling its vaunted Silkworm missile to Iran?

Anyway, I still can't make head or tails of this.
Thanks for this latest update tho!

Revelations that Russia had been involved in secret arms trading would be deeply embarrassing. A pretend hijacking appears to have been the solution. It is, after all, the perfect pretext for the Russian authorities to board the Arctic Sea and quietly retrieve its cargo, and to justify a lavish air-and-sea rescue mission.

I don't like this story either. It does give a little more info on the bizarre ecologist story which I had previously just thrown out. "They had a swimming pool"-- The Mothers of Invention.

Why would Russia be "deeply embarrassed" about a busted weapons deal especially if it was undertaken by 'rouge agents', and if it wasn't rogue agents, and for some unknown reason the Russian state had decided to dispense with tried and true channels of delivering weapons, why not just make up some rogue agents, I mean not some ecologists, and then then even if so, why not push the ecologist story. Why not trumpet it. Everybody boasts about big drug busts and unearthed weapons caches. Besides, how many times has the US lost untold amounts of arms... thinking about planeloads that disappeared in Iraq? US loses track of 190,000 weapons in Iraq http://tinyurl.com/yrcztf

Ok, It is embarrassing, but who cares?

The call to Voitenko actually sounded like a friendly warning, but it's somewhat hard to distinguish such warnings from threats. Good he'll be writing for Novaya Gazeta because while he was a little google-eyed I liked him anyway.

Not buying. And while this whole thing is as suspicious as walking in on friendly town hall meeting I'd note that witnesses to a crime are often barred from talking to the press.

Lefortovo really needs to beef up it's security.





Medvedev has said he has no problem selling the S-300 or other defensive weapons. This card seems to make an appearance anytime Israel and the West get all itchy to bomb Iran. Putin has said that bombing Iran would be a huge mistake and Russia has just finished installing automatic controls at Iran's nuclear plant. Meanwhile Netanyahoo has just said that Iran isn't really all that strong after all. So, the Israeli angle to this story, if it was as theorized, appears not to have had the intended effect.

The Silkworm is an outdated missile similar to the Exocet of Falklands war fame and derived from the Russian Styx. China has recently claimed development of ballistic anti-ship missiles. Iran has the Silkworm and fired it during during the 80's wars, they now make their own. What really worries naval guys is the Sunburn, also outdated, but it can also be used air to ground. China has some and Iran too.

Maybe the Russians were delivering a Doomsday Machine to Iran, but then they would tell us about it, right?

Inside the Apocalyptic Soviet Doomsday Machine.

http://www.wired.com/politics/security/ ... ntPage=all

RT has the results of the investigation into the dam explosion.
I've got no questions about it.

It looks as though it was the bearing installation on turbine number 2. The operators were aware that it was vibrating excessively but were under pressure because a fire at another generator in Siberia had left the area short of power. The installation fault didn't cause overheating and jam the bearing which would presumably have been monitored (see my earlier comments). The bearing mounting bolts suffered fatigue. According to RT vibration in #2 had been known since 1979 and highlighted in a report in 2000. Overdriving this turbine was a decision that involved a clear risk. Whether this is a problem due to lack of maintenance funding or safety awareness by the operators remains open to debate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJ6G0rxnzbw

http://news.ph.msn.com/business/article ... id=3746632

A lawyer working for one of the suspects arrested in the affair of the hijacted Arctic Sea has gone missing, one of her colleagues told the Interfax agency Saturday.

Elena Romanova-Lebedeva has not been seen or heard from since she left her Moscow office on Wednesday, towards midnight, fellow lawyer Omar Akhmedov told the agency.

"We have searched everywhere and reported her disappearance to the police," said Akhmedov, who represents another of the suspects.

The Arctic Sea was hijacked in July in circumstances that are still not clear.

But Akhmedov said Romanova-Lebedeva had also been working on several major murder cases in the Vladimir region, which lies about 190 kilometres (120 miles) east of Moscow.

"After having phoned all the morgues and checked the police logs, we have found nothing," he added.

The Arctic Sea was ship was carrying timber from Finland to Algeria in July when investigators said it was hijacked as it passed through the Channel towards the Atlantic.

The incident sparked a high-seas chase amid rumours that it was transporting a secret cargo.

Weeks later the Maltese-flagged vessel was recaptured by Russian warships off the west African islands of Cape Verde. Eleven crew were flown to Moscow and initially detained while apparently being prevented from speaking to their families, fuelling speculation of a cover up.

Eight suspects -- Russians, Estonians and Latvians -- have been accused of hijacking the Arctic Sea and are now awaiting trial in Moscow on charges of piracy and kidnapping. They have maintained their innocence.

Russian officials have denied several media reports here that Moscow wanted to intercept the cargo having been tipped off that a mafia group had loaded sophisticated S-300 for shipment to Iran.

The official version being pursued by the Russian authorities is of an act of piracy in Swedish waters, a theory that has met with a sceptical reponse from some maritime experts.

Former Estonian Spy Accused in Arctic Sea Case
14 June 2010
By Alexander Bratersky
A Latvian has been sentenced to seven years in prison for hijacking the Arctic Sea ship last year, and he accused the former head of Estonia's intelligence service of organizing the operation.

The defendant and convicted leader of the hijacking, Dmitry Savins, told a Moscow court that Eerik Niiles Kross, a former Estonian official, businessman and historian, was hard-pressed for money and orchestrated the hijack expecting to receive a $1.5 million ransom from the owners of the Arctic Sea, RIA-Novosti reported.

Savins, who was sentenced Friday, said Kross paid him 200,000 euros ($244,000), and each of the other pirates was promised 20,000 euros.

But no evidence against Kross was given, and piracy expert Mikhail Voitenko called the claim “pulp fiction” in his online Maritime Bulletin. Voitenko, who was the first to report about the Arctic Sea's mysterious disappearance last July, was forced to leave Russia in fear for his life after he said the incident might be linked to a weapons smuggling operation.

Investigators are looking into the matter, Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin told reporters Friday.

Kross, who headed the Estonian intelligence service in the late 1990s, has acknowledged being acquainted with Savins, who rented an office in a building owned by him, but denied any involvement in the Arctic Sea case. Kross currently runs the Trustcorp consulting company, which is involved in political lobbying, intelligence planning and crisis management in post-Soviet countries, including Georgia, and Kross linked Georgia to the accusations against him.

“I think this invention is connected to my work as a security adviser in Georgia. Georgia is not Russia’s best friend,” Kross told Estonia's Eesti Paevaleht newspaper.

Kross also wrote several historical nonfiction books about the “Forest Brothers,” Estonian guerillas who fought against the Soviet army in the 1940s. His father was a former gulag prisoner and prominent historical novelist.

The Estonian Prosecutor General's Office said it did not have any evidence of Kross' involvement in the case, Interfax reported.

The Arctic Sea, which was carrying a cargo of timber from Kaliningrad to West Africa, disappeared in July off the coast of Sweden and was rediscovered and boarded by the Russian Navy off Cape Verde a month later.

Russian authorities have given conflicting versions of what happened, prompting speculation that the ship might have carried a secret cargo, possibly missiles for Iran or drugs.

Eight people, including Russian, Estonian and Latvian citizens, were detained aboard the Arctic Sea. Two, including Savins, pleaded guilty and have been convicted. The others have denied wrongdoing, claiming to be environmentalists abducted by the ship's crew. They are awaiting trial in Russia.

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/arti ... 08230.html