What Happened to the Missing Ship 'Arctic Sea'?

As I understand things, there's no substantiated third part evidence that whoever boarded the craft actually left. In fact, there's no evidence that the craft was actually boarded beyond the declarations of the crew to their company office and even that was filtered through the company office.

So, the veritable chain of evidence since the initially reported incident is slim at best.

At this point, without a large timber debris field, I think it's fair to say the ship hasn't been sunk. I give the odds of the whole original crew still being alive (inside job?) at about 1%. Odds that there some party laded a nefarious cargo: 99%.

This has to be my favorite conspiracy in ages.

okay this is going to to make everybody burts with theories, but because the owning company is registered in finland this is very well covered story here. so some additional news reports.

ship was in repairs at Kaliningrad for two weeks just before sailing to get the timber cargo.Kaliningrad houses a very large russian military and navy base.
www.guardian.co.uk...

According to jakobstad's port's crew ships carqo hold was empty, when they started loading timber. So what ever there might be/is additional to the timber it is not very large, because it is not in cargo holds. Allso finnish boarder authorities say that crews and ships papers very okay. Ship has been loading same kind of cargo from finland earlier. So everything seemed to go routinely when it was in port at Jakobstad, Finland.

Ship is operated by Solchart Management AB based on Helsinki, Finland. Owners seems to be of Russian origin, but permanently resident in Finland.

Allso according to finnish media some source in russian navy told to Interfax that Russian navy ship Ladnyi had sighted and was tracking Arctic Sea. Navy denies this telling that source single person and he is mistaken. They say they have launched a search mission, but haven't located the ship. Apparently large parts of russian Black Sea fleet has been mobilized to Bay of Biscay and Atlant to search to ship.

So easy theories: Somebody loaded some weapons/drugs to ship in kaliningrad to be transported to algeria. Then ship goes to finland gets fully legal timber last as normally. Then somebody gets tipped of at the additional dargo. If it's weapons it could be rival mob clearing their arguments or russian security service wanting the weapons back. This would say weapon cargo is something russian would not want admit losing. If its drugs it could be normal mob clear of/cargo theft. Russian mafia surely has enough resources to pull this off. All so doing this in Baltic sea points to large desperation. Baltic is very narrow compared to ocean's and very well patrolled/tracked. It would have been much easier to wait to ship to get to Atlant and do the attack there. So it must be someone who has no resources to goto to Atlant, or someone in haste.

This is a news update on this story:

A Russian-manned cargo ship that vanished last month in the Atlantic was found Friday near Cape Verde off the coast of West Africa, according to French and Russian officials. There was no immediate information about the condition of the crew or whether there was anyone else onboard.

The Arctic Sea – carrying a load of timber and 15 Russian sailors – disappeared after passing through the English Channel on July 28. The Maltese-flagged freighter sent radio messages as it sailed along the coasts of France and Portugal, but then all contact was lost.

"Cape Verde coast guards said they have located the boat" about 520 miles (840 kilometers) off Cape Verde, said French Defense Ministry spokesman Capt. Jerome Baroe. France was involved in search efforts together with several other countries.

Two military officials in Brussels separately confirmed the ship had been tracked and located off West Africa. The officials asked not to be named while the operation was ongoing.

Russian naval ships were ordered to pursue the ship after the Cape Verde coast guard reported the freighter was outside the country's territorial waters to the north, Russian Ambassador to Cape Verde, Alexander Karpushin, told The Associated Press.

www.huffingtonpost.com...

reply to post by grover


That report has been reported to be false, there's been lots of reports of it being found, then not found, then found again. Nothing about it adds up.

Anyway there is a 22 page thread on this missing ship with lots of ideas of what might of happened. I'm sure there are a few others as well, but this is the one I've been following.
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Latest report that I've seen is this one bellow, but I'll beleive it when they show some live news footage of it returning to port.

Ransom demand made for Arctic Sea cargo ship
A RANSOM has been demanded from the Finnish owners of a Russian-crewed cargo ship that disappeared two weeks ago, Finnish police said. "Yes it is true that there has been a demand for ransom which is money, and the demand has been made to the company which owns the ship, Solchart Management in Finland," Detective Chief Superintendent Jan Nyholm said.

www.news.com.au...



[edit on 15/8/09 by SG-1-9er]

I have a working theory. It goes something like this:

The vessel loads "stolen goods" (clickety-click-on-the-Geiger-counter-sort-of-goods) in Kaliningrad.
The vessel sails for Finland.
Russians find out they're missing an item or two from a storage facility.
The investigation proceeds swiftly, they figure out items are on the MV Arctic Sea.
They make plans to retrieve said goods.
Vessel docks in Finland, loads timber, sails for "Algeria".
As it's sailing south through Swedish waters, Russian forces, probably VYMPEL, board the ship and take it over. Contrary to media reports, they never leave the ship.
From now on the ship is under their control, and any communication by the ship is under their direction.
The Russians start planting disinfo in the media (how many conflicting reports have we seen?).

I'm betting we'll soon see the ship mysteriously reappear somewhere, after someone pays the "ransom" that has just recently been demanded. This way everyone will think it was a piracy event.

Your thoughts?

P.S. something here tells me the S has really, but really hit the fan here. I'm trying to research this as best I can, but there's not much to go on. I mean really, how do you read Major Gen Tom Wilkerson from the US Naval Institute saying things like this:
news.bbc.co.uk...
around 1.01 into the piece?

[edit on 15/8/2009 by Voiceoftreason]

[edit on 15/8/2009 by Voiceoftreason]

reply to post by Voiceoftreason


It is as workable as any though I would suggest that if the ship started getting hot from its illicite cargo it was sunk to hide the evidence.