arctic sea: media decoy, russian dolls?

.
Arctic sea: media decoy, russian dolls?

Moscow may have been tempted as the cold war was being reignited also around the North Pole, to experiment some new media tactics aiming at delivering a strong warning about Russia's determination regarding its arctic stakes.

Could a bunch of small street punks really have staged an ambitious international weapon scam, abused a "derelict corrupt Russia" and made a fool of it - thanks to a generous media coverage?

Or has some PR "Kasparov" cabinet convinced the Kremlin to bait a gullible gang -with the appropriated kind of caviar, and a duly named boat, manned by a FSB / GRU crew- in order to show that Russia's military might will be fully deployed to defend the Arctic Sea, meaning the Arctic "tout court"?

One matryoshka may well reveal another one.

Alexandre de Perlinghi

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/estonia/6143608/Hijackers-of-Arctic-Sea-ghost-ship-in-murky-waters.html


'Hijackers' of Arctic Sea ghost ship in murky waters

How did petty thugs, drunks and drug dealers get arrested on a hijacked freighter and become linked to espionage, gun running and the Russian Mafia?

Colin Freeman and Andrew Osborn in Moscow report

8:18PM BST 05 Sep 2009

On the vast Soviet-era housing estate where they grew up, they were notorious - one killed a man in a barfight, another was a petty drug dealer, and others had convictions for drunkenness and thuggery.

What nobody in the peeling, windswept towerblocks of Lasnamae can believe, though, is that wayward neighbours like Dmitry Bartenev and his friends would ever have graduated to international criminal espionage, involving secret arms deals, the Kremlin and Mossad.

That, however, was the question being asked last week on the streets of this drab suburb of Tallinn, capital of the Baltic state of Estonia, as a detailed picture emerged for the first time of the men accused of July's mysterious hijacking of the Arctic Sea.

The vessel, which vanished for several days after being boarded by "pirates" in the Baltic, is currently at the centre of the greatest Cold War riddle since the killing of Alexander Litvinkenko, with theories abounding that it was carrying an illicit cargo for the Kremlin or the Russian Mafia.

Only two days ago, the sense of intrigue grew yet greater with the news that a well-informed Russian journalist who had speculated that it might have been smuggling weapons had fled the country after receiving threatening phone calls from "high level" people.

Mikhail Voitenko, editor of the online Maritime Bulletin, said he had feared for his life after a warning call from a "cold official voice" thought to be an intelligence agent. "Very important government people got involved in this business," he told the Sunday Telegraph from Turkey. "I ran away because I was afraid."

Speculation is now mounting that the hijack was some Israeli attempt to intercept a clandestine weapons cache bound for either Iran or Syria. Yet none of those arrested when Russian navy ships finally found the Arctic Sea off the West African coast in mid-August resemble either elite Mossad agents, or indeed criminal masterminds.

The eight suspects – six from Estonia, two from neighbouring Latvia – are all now awaiting trial in a Moscow jail, facing up to 15 years in prison for allegedly hijacking the ship at gunpoint.

So far, though, the most striking feature about the gang is that most of them appear to have grown up within a few blocks of each other in Lasnamae, a district home to much of Estonia's ethnic Russian minority. And if inquiries by the Sunday Telegraph there last week were anything to go by, the only thing that might have qualified them as pirates is a shared fondness for brawling, tattoos and intoxicants.

Estonian officials have confirmed that two of the men, Dmitri Bartenev, 42, and Yevgeny Mironov, 30, were on probation at the time that they were arrested. Mironov had recently been released from prison for manslaughter after a fight in a bar in Tallinn in 2001, while Mr Bartenev, who had served in the merchant navy, had been in trouble for possessing amphetamines and drink driving. According to the Moscow prosecutors investigating the case, a total of six of the eight suspects had served prison terms between 2001 and 2005, with offences ranging from burglary to extortion.

"I have recognised many of their pictures in the newspapers, and it is strange to think that they all grew up around here," said a baffled Mila Savitska, 41, one of many residents who recognise the men variously as classmates, neighbours or troublemakers. "Some of them, also, got on the wrong side of the law. But would they have been the kind of people to get involved with this business with the Arctic Sea? I don't think so. It is out of their league."

Mr Bartenev and his companions are supposed to have boarded the ship in the Baltic Sea and then forced the crew to sail south through the English channel and on towards the Cape Verde Islands, in what was initially billed the first piracy case in European waters in centuries. While it was originally thought the ship might have been carrying drugs, the fact that the Kremlin ordered a large-scale naval operation to track it down has prompted suggestions of a far more sensitive contraband, such as an illicit weapons or nuclear shipment. Although the Kremlin itself might not have been directly involved, the contraband shipment could have been the work of rogue security or Mafia elements, as the Litvinenko murder is often purported to have been.

Such scenarios gained further currency last week when the European Union's rapporteur on piracy, former Estonian admiral Tarmo Kouts, said he believed it was possible that the boat could have been carrying weapons to either Iran or Syria. "We don't really know what was on the ship, but there is a reason to think that it was something other than timber," he said.

Many observers say that events immediately before and after its disappearance lend credence to that scenario. Prior to its eventful journey, the freighter had spent a fortnight undergoing repairs in Kaliningrad, a notorious Russian smuggling enclave on the Baltic Sea, where some believe it could have been fitted with secret compartments. And the day after Russia announced that it had found the ship, Israeli president Shimon Peres paid a visit to President Dmitry Medvedev in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. Details of their discussions have not been revealed, although a statement from the Israeli Foreign Ministry said that Mr Peres had raised the matter of the "the sale of Russian weapons and military hardware to countries hostile to Israel".

However, if Israel had intended to intercept the cargo, why would they entrust such a sensitive task to a crew of motley Estonians with criminal records? One possible explanation is that the "interception" was actually carried out by a gang posing as Swedish policemen, who were reported to have briefly boarded the boat and interrogated the crew a couple of days before it was "hijacked". But in that case, what were the hijackers themselves after?

Alexander Samodaikin, the lawyer for Estonian suspect Alexei Buleyev, insists they were not hijackers at all, but a group of environmental activists, who only boarded the boat after their motorised dinghy ran out of petrol. "They were supposed to photograph ships breaching environmental legislation in the Baltic Sea," he said. However, his claim that they were simply innocents who strayed into some high-level trafficking scandal raises more questions than it answers. For a start, none of the men have yet named the environmental group they were working for, nor could Mr Somadaikin explain why it needed eight of them to take photographs. Other aspects of his client's version of events are even more bizarre, such as his claim that rather than taking the crew hostage, they spent their time drinking vodka together. If so, sceptics say, the vodka must have been flowing very liberally - otherwise, why on earth were the "eco-activists" content to remain on board as the boat sailed all the way to the Cape Verde islands?

Indeed, the only thing that now seems certain is that unlike the Cold War espionage thrillers which it so closely resembles, the crucial final chapter in the mystery of the Arctic Sea is likely to be missing forever. Crew members have already been told by the Kremlin not to talk publicly on any account, while the vessel itself is now en route for "investigation" at a Russian military docks, where any incriminating cargo can easily be kept hidden. And while the debates about what really happened will no doubt go on, one voice who is likely to be weighing his contributions more carefully is the fugitive Maritime Bulletin editor, Mr Voitenko. Yesterday, the rumours were that he had already moved on to Thailand, and when the Sunday Telegraph tried to contact him again, his phone line was dead.

related article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/6145336/Arctic-Sea-ghost-ship-was-carrying-weapons-to-Iran.html