Northern Fleet submarines to search for hijacked cargo ship?
Russia has sent two nuclear powered submarines to search for “Arctic Sea”, a cargo vessel that is thought to have been hijacked by pirates or gangsters.
Russia’s president Dmitry Medvedev today ordered the Armed Forces to search for the Maltese-flagged and Russian crewed “Arctic Sea”, which disappeared two weeks ago after it reported being attacked by armed intruders near the Swedish coast, ITAR-TASS reports.
- All Russian navy ships in the Atlantic have been sent to join the search for the vessel, said Admiral Vladimir Vysotsky, the Russian Navy commander. Warships and two nuclear powered submarines are on their way to the Atlantic Ocean.
An expert from the Russian Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies (CAST) tells Radio Finam that the two submarines probably are Akula-class subs from the Northern Fleet. This is the same type of submarines that American media last week reported were patrolling the waters outside USA, as BarentsObserver wrote.
The expert from CAST adds that he finds it strange that submarines are scrambled to carry out a search in the Atlantic Ocean: - Aircrafts are better to use if you want to search for a ship. It is possible that they are sending the submarines out on another mission and just using the search as an excuse, he says to Radio Finam.
The cargo ship “Arctic Sea” has a Russian crew of 15 and carries a timber cargo worth over one million USD.
