The UK-owned bulk carrier Ariana was sailing under the Maltese flag, and Somali pirates captured the vessel with 24 Ukrainian crew onboard.
Vasily Kirilitch, Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry press secretary, confirmed to Interfax that all the sailors are Ukrainian nationals. He said the country’s embassies were instructed to “take prompt measures to set constant contact with ship-owner, operating company and authorities in order to clarify circumstances of the capture and free the sailors as soon as possible”.
It seems that the super powers of the world should be able to stop these pirates.
The Gulf of Aden remains one of the most dangerous places in the modern maritime world. According to Kenya’s foreign minister, Somali pirates have collected more than $150 million in ransoms over the last year. Somalia is a political and economic mess – and piracy offers the chance for a profitable business.
Pirates had a constant presence in the news in September 2008 when they seized the Ukrainian freighter Faina. The ship with a crew of 18 Ukrainians, three Russians and one Latvian was carrying 32 battle tanks and ammunition. This just shows how long these Pirates have been getting away with this.
By Sara Freidman
Popularity: 12% [?]
May 3, 2009
Human rights watchdog Amnesty International has accused China and Russia of breaching a United Nations arms embargo by continuing to supply weapons to the Sudanese authorities for use in Darfur.
Popularity: 13% [?]
May 8, 2007
Russia’s nuclear equipment export monopoly Atomstroyexport said Monday it plans to build a nuclear power plant in Morocco.
Popularity: 8% [?]
March 19, 2007
Russia hopes for a package of energy and metals deals with African states, a ministry statement said on Friday, March 16, as a government delegation left for South Africa, Angola and Namibia. Some Russian firms however deny having any such plans.
Popularity: 14% [?]
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Russia, Gazprom, Africa, Business & Finance, Angola, Lukoil, Rosneft, Industrial, Mining, Diamonds, South Africa, Namibia, Alrosa, RusAl
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One Russian citizen was killed and another injured in a bomb explosion in Algeria, Russia’s foreign ministry said Sunday.
Popularity: 13% [?]
March 4, 2007
Russia on Wednesday denounced as “exceedingly cruel†the death sentences passed by a Libyan court on six foreign medics convicted of deliberately infecting hundreds of Libyan children with the virus that causes AIDS, the Reuters news agency reported.
Popularity: 16% [?]
December 20, 2006
The U.S. government has frozen assets of two men from the former Soviet Union. Viktor Bout and Dmitry Popov are accused of illegally supplying weapons to rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
According to a statement from the White House, the two were supplying weapons to the fighters in the east of the country using a small airline as cover. The arms were allegedly traded for illegal diamonds in Africa.
Popularity: 5% [?]
November 3, 2006
Angolan President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos arrives in Moscow for a three-day visit Monday with an agenda dominated by bilateral economic and international issues, Kremlin press office reported in Monday.
Russia has been seeking to re-establish contacts with African states, including oil-rich Angola, under President Vladimir Putin. The president and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made separate tours of the continent this fall, signaling a fresh interest in business cooperation since the collapse of the Soviet Union, which supplied arms and other goods to Africa in the ideological standoff with the West.
Russia is currently Angola’s 10th largest partner, according to Rossiiskaya Gazeta, a government daily. But meeting with Lavrov in September, Soviet-educated Dos Santos urged more intensive cooperation with Russia, above all in the development of new iron ore, oil and gas deposits, and space.
The Kremlin press office said: “A set of bilateral documents is expected to be signed at the meeting.†Other areas of cooperation between Russia and Angola include diamond production, power engineering, and fisheries. Russia’s largest diamond producer, Alrosa, has about a 40% stake in the Catoca diamond joint venture in Angola, which produces around 6 million carats of crude diamonds a year.
Russian companies are helping the country build the largest hydropower plant in the region, with a capacity of 520 mWt, and are in talks on the construction of power lines. Russian fishing companies also catch up to 25,000 metric tons of sea products a year in Angolan waters.
Angola has shown brisk economic development exploiting its vast mineral resources since the government signed a ceasefire agreement with American-backed UNITA rebels in 2002, following 27 years of bloody civil war. The country, which was in ruins several years ago, plans to export up to 2 million barrels of oil annually, largely to the United States and China, by 2008, RIA Novosti reports.
Popularity: 5% [?]
October 30, 2006
A Russian yacht with a two-man crew that was sailing across the Red Sea on its way to the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia’s Fast East has been detained in Eritrea, either by officials or an armed group, an official in the Kamchatka administration said Tuesday, the RIA Novosti news agency reports.
The Svenja, owned by Kamchatka’s Yacht Racing Federation, was seized while docking on the coast of the northeast African country after running out of fuel in stormy weather, according to a radio-message received by a nearby Russian ship.
The ship then informed Kamchatka authorities of the incident by e-mail.
The spokesman said it remains unclear who is detaining the crew, Eritrean authorities or an armed group. The two men, one of whom is the yacht federation’s chief Yevgeny Panchenko, have had their identification documents and navigation charts seized, he said.
The Russian Foreign Ministry has been informed of the incident, RIA Novosti reports.
Popularity: 4% [?]
October 27, 2006
