Translated material
How they sank into the water
No one is looking for a ship with a Russian crew that went missing in the Atlantic
Representatives of the Russian Navy reported yesterday that several warships of the Black Sea Fleet will in the coming days join the search for the cargo ship Arctic Sea with a Russian crew, which mysteriously disappeared in the Atlantic Ocean. The Maltese-flagged ship, loaded with lumber, left the Finnish port of Pietarsaari on July 22 and was scheduled to arrive in the Algerian port of Bejaia on August 4. However, on July 28, communication with him was interrupted, and since then the whereabouts and fate of the ship have been unknown. Russian officials were reluctant to comment on the situation yesterday, and, as it turned out, no one is actually looking for the missing ship.The disappearance of Arctic Sea, owned by the Arkhangelsk company Solchart Arkhangelsk Ltd, was preceded by an equally mysterious incident. On the night of July 24, near the Swedish island of Oland in the Baltic Sea, Arctic Sea was attacked by unknown assailants. An inflatable boat moored to the cargo ship, from which seven or eight armed and masked men dressed in black climbed aboard. They tied up all 15 crew members at gunpoint and searched the ship for about 12 hours. What exactly the unknown people, who, according to some sources, introduced themselves as police officers, were looking for is unknown. Having completed the search, the “men in black” left the ship without taking any things or money from the crew.
Having contacted the shipowner and reported the incident, the sailors continued their journey without entering one of the nearby ports. In turn, the Swedish police, having denied their involvement in the search, have already begun an investigation into the strange attack.
Arctic Sea, meanwhile, passed through the English Channel and, not far from the coasts of France and Great Britain, communication with it was suddenly interrupted. The editor-in-chief of the Maritime Bulletin - Sovfrakht publication, Mikhail Voitenko, was the first to tell reporters about the disappearance of the dry cargo ship at the end of last week. According to him, the last time relatives communicated with crew members was on July 28, and the last signal from the ship via the automatic identification system (AIS) was received on July 30 at 1.29, when the ship entered the Bay of Biscay, which washes the shores of France and Spain. It is unclear what could have happened to it - whether the ship sank or was captured.
Experts do not rule out that AIS on the Arctic Sea could have been deliberately disabled. “Disabling an AIS station is not difficult. It will not be difficult for a specialist to find an alarm signal unit, a VDR unit (black box), communication equipment and portable radios on the bridge,” reported Maritime Bulletin - Sovfracht.
According to Mr. Voitenko, the timber cargo could hardly have caused the ship's loss. “This is either secret or smuggling,” he said. It is known that before calling at Jakobstad the ship underwent a 2-week repair in Kaliningrad, and the timber constituted only part of its cargo. At the same time, according to Mr. Voitenko, the version that the ship could sink is practically excluded - in European waters this would become known as soon as possible.
The head of the laboratory of the Institute of Oceanology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Sergei Gulev, said yesterday that the disappearance of the ship is unlikely to be due to natural causes. “I don’t see any meteorological or oceanological reasons that could lead to the disappearance of the ship, given that it did not send distress signals. “I don’t believe in any kind of instantaneous being pulled into the depths or the ship falling apart,” he noted. -- In the event of an emergency, the ship's crew usually has time to send a distress signal. If this does not happen, then something extraordinary has happened. Even when a ship is hijacked, SOS is activated on the bridge.”
The ship owning company also knows nothing about the fate of Arctic Sea. “All we can say for now is that communication with the ship has not been established,” noted Solchart Arkhangelsk Ltd. Yesterday in Arkhangelsk the company's management met with relatives of the missing sailors. An FSB officer was also present at the meeting, who asked the relatives when they last communicated with the sailors by phone.
According to information from Maritime Bulletin - Sovfracht and Bloomberg, on board the cargo ship was a shipment of lumber worth 1.3 million euros, belonging to the Finnish-Swedish timber corporation Stora Enso. However, a representative of this company said yesterday that the cost of their cargo is only 300 thousand euros. “The ship contains 2 thousand cubic meters of our forest,” he noted. A company spokesman said he had no information about what other companies owned the cargo being transported by Arctic Sea.
The Maltese maritime authorities (Arctic Sea's home port is Valletta, the capital of Malta) said yesterday that they are aware of the emergency with the Arctic Sea and are monitoring the situation.
Russian departments practically did not comment on the situation yesterday. The State Marine Emergency and Rescue Coordination Service of the Russian Federation stated that the search for the missing ship was already underway, but declined to comment further, advising them to contact the Ministry of Transport. They also refused to talk about the fate of the missing ship, sending it to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The same department and the FSB have not yet commented on anything.
Meanwhile, according to Mr. Voitenko, in fact, no one is still looking for the missing cargo ship. He noted that Russia does not have the technical capabilities to independently search for the ship in this area of the World Ocean and it is necessary to carry out a large-scale search operation with the involvement of rescue services of all states located along the ship’s intended route. According to him, if the crew or the alleged kidnappers do not get in touch in the next day or two, he intends to contact the Foreign Ministry with a request to issue an appropriate official statement, after which a large-scale search should begin. In addition, Mr. Voitenko noted yesterday that based on the information he collected from various sources, he can conclude that the crew and the ship are safe and sound.
So far, only the Russian Navy has announced their intention to search for the missing cargo ship. They reported that in a few days, four warships of the Black Sea Fleet will arrive in the area of the supposed disappearance of the Arctic Sea, heading to Baltiysk to participate in the Zapad-2009 exercises from Sevastopol.
“On Tuesday at 23.00 Moscow time they will leave the Strait of Gibraltar into the Atlantic Ocean. They will begin a search in the area where the Arctic Sea vessel is believed to have disappeared. However, search activities will only take place incidentally - in the zone and within the framework of the movement schedule of Russian ships, since they must arrive in Baltiysk at the appointed time,” the Navy said yesterday.
At the same time, the Portuguese authorities have already reported that the Arctic Sea did not enter the territorial waters of this country, and the Spanish authorities stated that the cargo ship did not cross the Strait of Gibraltar.