Word: shipping
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...When asked by TIME about the possibility that the Arctic Sea was carrying a secret cargo, Vladimir Voronov, deputy head of Oy Solchart Management - the Helsinki-based, Russian-run company that operates the ship - replied, "I don't know anything about a secret cargo. We're just a simple shipping firm, and from what we understand, our ship was hijacked...
...just piracy," says Mikhail Voitenko, editor of the Russian maritime journal Sovfrakht, which has been tracking unusual incidents on the high seas for decades. "I've never seen anything like this. These are some of the most heavily policed waters in the world. You cannot just hide a ship there for weeks without government involvement...
...According to Voitenko and other experts, a secret cargo could have been hidden on the ship during the two weeks it spent in Kaliningrad for repairs, just before it picked up its Finnish haul of timber. Not contiguous with the rest of Russia, Kaliningrad is the country's westernmost enclave on the coast of the Baltic Sea, and is known as a hub for Russian smugglers. "Personally, I don't care about any missiles," Voitenko tells TIME. "I care about what they're doing with those sailors...
...Latynina, a prominent political commentator and radio host on Echo of Moscow, a station owned by state-controlled gas giant Gazprom. "They will now use the incident as a bargaining chip with Russia over weapons sales in the region, while allowing Russia to save face by taking its empty ship back home." When contacted by TIME, both the Israeli Prime Minister's office and Mossad, Israel's secret service, declined to comment. (See pictures of 60 years of Israel...
...Bastrykin, told official state newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta that a band of new-age pirates, possibly in connivance with the crew, is all that lies behind the Arctic Sea mystery. But he did concede that there are questions that need answering. "We don't rule out the possibility that [the ship] was carrying more than just timber," he said, without elaborating further...