well don ron.

Former Soviet officer blaming Israel to hide Russian involvement. Sounds more like FSB or SVR attempting to divert attention from their activities.

But you guy's were happy when you heard the first wave of rumors indicating that it was israel's job. Now all of a sudden...

what has the world come to ? if one cannot believe the word of an admiral (no less !) in the estonian navy, why what's next ? no santa claus ? or did the israelis "hijack" santa ?

congratulations for the inquery. it'd seems more realistic than the Kouts's version...and the ''hijackers'' loks more russian than israeli! Ah! the russian ! the script was written too quickly!

where theres smoke there usualy a fire ...keep your eyes open !

Your story has a picture which purports to show Russian police handling hijackers. Except the 'Russian' policeman on the right of the picture sure looks like a black guy. He could be Obama's cousin. Are you sure the picture shows Russian police? I know Tchaikovsky was supposed to have black blood. But how many blacks are there nowadays in Russia who join the police dept? Are you absolutely sure someone didn't sell you a bill of goods?

You Zionists always have been good at spinning and obfuscating, and diverting deserved blame away from you, but this planted story really wins a prize. I almost feel like doffing my hat to you for this one!

another view: an israeli team took the ship and in twelf hours sunk all misslies into the baltic sea and left the ship. (initial swedish police reports said the hijackers talked a broken english to the crew and not russian.) russia noticed about the embarrassment and tried to cover the story: so they sent a team by them that "hijacked" the ship again (of course claiming it to be the same hijack). then they report it again "missing", and making a rendevous far away where nobody can see. and then they present the russian speaking "hijackers" and invent the whole story about a randsom and so on. a weak point in this theory is that russia used three of it's biggest military planes to bring the 12 man crew + the 8 hijackers to russia. maybe ynet is right and russia really took the missles back home?

Commenting on the apparent Black officer. Israel has a large population of Ethiopian and Northern African Immigrants. Israel also has nearly 1 million russian jews. So, the team depicted could be entirely Israeli, while appearing to be something other like Russian intel. It would be nice if this truly was Israeli intel discovering and destroying the weapons. The cargo planes could be a russian decoy to make us think that the weapons were siezed and return to mother russia. Thoughts?

One that has numerous small Asian states under its control, remnants of Russian Imperial and Soviet times that didn't have the power or the inclination to secede following the break-up of the USSR? Man's probably from the southern south-eastern states, possibly near Azerbaijan. And further, the USSR got some African citizens during its outreach era, when it tried to spread Communism across the under-developed world. Part of that involved many people who came over form Africa to study in Russia - a few here and there stayed. And pretty much every one else in the pictures is Slavic.

Surely there must be more to using these things than just to push the red button.

Did you miss that part of the article? When the Russian commandos overtook the ship, they docked it in Africa and unloaded the weapons cargo where it was transported back to Russia. Now does the picture make sense?

By the way, this story is about the best that has come out of those trying to explain this incident. It has the best reasoning and the best flow of events. Much better than the "anti-Zionist" version that goes "The Jews must have done it because they are bad and we hate them". Is it any wonder your in Obama's backyard in Maryland.

damn just like before WW2 the Riventrup Molotov agreement, history repeat it self.

YNET says:well as the Mossad's reasons for hijacking the ship rather than arresting it mid-route and unloading the supplies. Well how could Israel arrest a ship going from Finland to Alger? It would be a real wonder if an Israeli warship could stop a ship under EU flag in the English Channel. Claiming that Russia was all the way behind this is absurd. Why would they have done this in such a complex and public way? Surely they would have other less public means to force the Russian ship owner living in Finland to give up the illegal cargo.

If there is any truth to these allegations, then it is likely that Israel shared intelligence with Russia that rogue elements of russian military where selling Russian state property, and the time line minus Israeli agents active involvment at sea starts to hold water. The only thing missing in the time line is, that is when this story first broke, it was reported that the men boarding the ship was reported by the captain that they boarded the ship prior to docking in Finland, that is after leaving the exclave of Kaliningrad and it wasn't until the ship went missing after navigating the English channel that the story first broke into the news with reports of this unusal high sea encounter. As the incident gained interest the story changed to where the men who boarded did so after leaving Finland. My bet is these men where meant to keep an eye on the secret shipment and to insure delivery or to ground the later unfolding account of the incident, somehow the crews involvment in this incident of one of having a gun being held to their head while still in Finland does not add up, hence the change of the intial report of being boarded prior to docking in Finland. Obviously the details of the whole story of this incident is being cooked. What is not adding up to me is how was the secret shipment to make its way to the Middle East, where they planning to sail the horn of Africa, or make port somewhere in West Africa and the shipment go by land to the middle east, or where they just to set sail to Algeria. It seems to me a very covoluted means to get the cargo into the middle east when there are more attractive routes. Maybe the whole guize was to conceal the payment, and add to plausible denial later when Iran suddenly has s-300 missles, if one shipment was intercepted, who to say other shipments where not successful and have made port into the Syrian port Russia is now basing their Eastern Mediterranean Fleet. If at some point Russia does intend to sell s-300 to syria or iran, somehow Russia needs to distance itself politically from the dipolmatic fallout when these missles become operational.

graczek , Maryland Yes, us Zionists are devious beings, good at lying (unlike the Palestinians who always tell the truth about everything). Of course it was a Zionist plot as is everything bad that happens in the world, WWI, WWII, swine flu, selling of body parts. There is no stopping our evil.

You claim that "the cargo" was flown to Russia by eight large Russian cargo planes. How did "the cargo" get onto those planes??? The Arctic Sea has not been in any port since she left Finland. More likely, the stuff was transferred onto the Ladny, the Russian corvette during that two week period when all three of the Russian vessels were hanging out in the open ocean east of the Cape Verde islands.