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Meet the men who were kidnapped by pirates The story of the sailors who spent four months in captivity on an arms ship hijacked off the coast of Somalia

Source: Meduza

In September 2008, Somali pirates hijacked the “MV Faina,” a Ukrainian cargo ship, in the Gulf of Aden. The freighter was on its way to Kenya, carrying old military equipment. There were 21 sailors on board: 17 Ukrainians, three Russians (including the captain and first mate), and one Latvian. The sailors spent more than four months in captivity before they were released in February 2009, after someone paid millions of dollars in ransom. Meduza’s Irina Kravtsova met with the men of the Faina and learned their story.

A drill or a joke

In 2007, Viktor Nikolsky was a recently widowed 60-year-old sailor. Until then, he'd spent his life working as a radio operator on ships, but he had recently completed ship drivers’ training in St. Petersburg in the hopes of starting a career as captain. The year after his wife died, when Nikolsky was looking for his next job, he got a call from a company based in Odessa, a Ukrainian city on the Black Sea coast. They told him that the first mate of the MV Faina had gone on a drinking spree, and they urgently needed a replacement. The ship was to sail any day now. Several hours later, Nikolsky boarded a plane to Ukraine. This trip would transform his life forever.

The MV Faina was a 1970s blue-and-white freighter headed from the Ukrainian port of Oktyabrsk to Mombasa, carrying old military equipment: 33 T-72 Soviet-designed tanks, 150 grenade launchers, and six antiaircraft guns and ammunition. There were 21 sailors on board: three Russian nationals (including captain Vladimir Kolobkov and first mate Nikolsky), 17 Ukrainians, and one Latvian.

The ship sailed under a Belize “flag of convenience,” which means it was registered in a different country than the country of its owner, Vadim Alperin, which helped cut operating costs. The freighter was headed across the Black Sea, through the Suez Canal, the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, and further south along the eastern coast of Africa.

Kolobkov, the captain, fell ill as soon as the ship left Ukraine in late September, and the other sailors recall seeing very little of him during the first few days. On September 25, first mate Nikolsky was on watch when another sailor pointed out to him that “some kind of white dot” was following them. It was a white motorboat, and the men on it were signaling to the MV Faina to stop. Suddenly, two other motorboats appeared out of nowhere, and Nikolsky gave orders to get some distance from them.

Twenty-seven-year old mechanic Anton Tarasov remembers he was just heading off for a nap when the commotion began. He heard the alarm go off, then someone yelled the word “pirates.” Tarasov assumed it was a drill or a joke, but then he heard the rocket launcher. Later, the sailors of the MV Faina would count 29 bullet holes in their ship.

The freighter was surrounded and 14 men armed with Kalashnikovs climbed aboard from two of the motorboats, as men on the third boat continued shooting. Nikolsky gave orders to stop the ship.

The attackers asked for the captain, who was so ill that he could barely walk and needed to lean on the other sailors to stand. The pirates announced that they were holding the sailors captive until they got their ransom. They surveyed the military equipment on board, and asked for $32 million.

It took another few days for Captain Vladimir Korobkov to start feeling better. One night, he asked to have a glass of milk before bedtime. The next morning, he died of a heart attack. He was 48 years old. The sailors wrapped his body in a bag, assembled a wooden coffin from supplies they found on the ship, and placed their dead captain in a large refrigerator they had emptied. The corpse would be there for the next 130 days.

Pirates turn a profit for insurance companies

The hijacking of the MV Faina was the 26th pirate attack off the coast of Somalia that year. Overall, 111 ships were attacked by pirates in 2008 around the world, and 42 of them were successfully hijacked.

A civil war began in Somalia in 1988, and since then the country has grappled with violence and a weak state. Against the backdrop of these struggles, Somali piracy began in the early 2000s.

Researchers disagree on what has caused the rise of Somali piracy. Journalist Mikhail Voitenko, who has been reporting on maritime issues in Russia for many years, says that Somali sailors initially policed the waters off the coast of Somalia to reign in particularly predatory fisherman and people who were dumping waste into the ocean. He says that 2004 became the first year that Somali sailors actually attacked a ship not with the goal of policing or robbery, but rather with the aim of hijacking it for ransom.

Mikhail Anichkin, the president of “Sodruzhestvo Mirotvorets,” a union of private companies that deal with security issues, says the attacks began in the early 2000s after an Italian ship threw waste into the Indian Ocean off the coast of Somalia, which caused mass death of fish. This caused hostility towards foreign freighters, and Somali sailors began to mobilize.

Voitenko and Anichkin agree that the situation escalated due to the actions of foreign companies, especially Western insurance agencies, since attacks in the Gulf of Aden made these companies' activities more profitable (even more profitable than the ransom money the pirates make, says Anichkin). Multiple experts told Meduza that they believe insurance companies actually helped to organize the Somali pirates, supplying them with weapons and the coordinates of passing ships. The Guardian and Reuters have also reported on the profits made by insurance companies thanks to the activities of Somali pirates.

Held captive

On the day they hijacked the ship, the pirates put a gun to Nikolsky’s head and threatened to kill him for not having immediately stopped the ship. Nikolsky remembers how scared he was: “I kept thinking about how I didn’t want to pee or shit myself in front of everyone.” Eventually, the pirates allowed Nikolsky to get in touch with the vessel's owner. “We’ve been attacked by pirates,” Nikolsky reported. “You’re kidding,” said the owner. 

The next day, the owner called back and promised that the sailors would be released in three days. In reality, it took them another four months to get home.

The pirates took the MV Faina to Somalia’s Hobyo port, a major destination for hijacked ships. They anchored the ship there with other foreign vessels, including oil tankers. This is where the pirates planned to wait for the ransom. At first, Nikolsky kept hearing that someone was about to pay the sum of money and everyone would get their hopes up, but each time the deal fell through. Sometime during the second month, the sailors drew up a calendar and started counting the days in order to keep track of time. They were constantly scared that the Americans would storm the ship. Instead, about eight hours after the hijacking, an American ship simply checked that the pirates were not taking any of the military equipment and left them alone.

At first, the situation on the ship was tense, and the pirates kept pointing their guns at the captives. But time went on, the ransom was nowhere to be seen, and a more amicable atmosphere descended on the ship. Once the food supply on the MV Faina was finished, the pirates began to deliver rice, potatoes, onions, and goats to their captives. They quickly got tired of this, and instead started to allow the captives to catch their own fish, and even taught them to distinguish between local edible fish and the fish they shouldn’t be eating. Sometimes, in return for a favor, like advice on medicine for an affliction, the pirates would share their own food with the sailors.

Nikolsky was bored out of his mind, and tried to learn the Somali language from the pirates. Nikolsky and Tarasov also quickly caught on to the fact that the older pirates had fond memories of the Soviet Union. One of them, who was around 60 years old, complained about the difficult life the pirates lead: “My joints are sore, everything is sore, but in the Soviet Union it was better — we had sponsorship, we were supported.” It reminded Tarasov of the nostalgia older generations back home have for the USSR.

Nikolsky tried to use this nostalgia as leverage. He reminded the pirates that the Soviet Union built schools and factories in Somalia. “So why did you take Russians as captives? Let us go,” he’d plead. It looked like he was making progress, until one of the pirates remembered that the USSR also helped Ethiopia. “They were at war with Ethiopia,” says Nikolsky. “My beautiful system of influence totally collapsed right then and there.”

Keeper of the seas

Abdi Ali is a 39-year-old Somali from Hobyo. He says he was a “keeper of the seas” between 2007 and 2010. He explained in correspondence with Meduza that he does not like to use the word “pirate.” He wrote letters that were translated for Meduza by Ahmed Isse, a Somali student studying in Moscow. “The real pirates were the ones on the fishing boats that took all our fish,” says Ali. He wanted to protect the seas from foreigners.

“Foreign ships would come into our waters without permission and would destroy our fishing boats. This was not my choice, but I had to do something to protect my property and ocean from illegal fishing,” Ali explains. He started to attack ships alongside several of his friends, also former fishermen.

Over four years, Ali helped to hijack four ships. He says he tried to avoid shooting, and was never injured himself. He remembers that attacking the ships was a terrifying exercise. A successful hijacking would earn him $90,000, which he would invest in preparing for the next attack.

Ahmed Isse, who lived in Somalia until 2012, said pirates did not have a good reputation in his own hometown. “Pirates would often come to the city where I lived, to spend their money,” but some shop owners who considered themselves to be “good Muslims” would refuse to sell their goods to a pirate in order to avoid having anything to do with money that had been stolen. Many families also considered marriage to a pirate to be improper for a young woman.

Abdi Ali says his friends and family also thought the money he was earning back then was "dirty money," and that his parents did not want to see him. "They thought I was a criminal, that I am not following religion and the traditions of Somalia." His wife asked him to quit his piracy because it was harming her and their children's standing in the community. He said he quit the work after he realized that his friends were attacking ships without discretion, and they weren't actually targeting illegal fishing. In 2012, he moved back to be with his family, and now has a job as a construction worker.

A failed mutiny and conspiracy

The captives were not always at ease with one another. According to Tarasov, pirates gave preferential treatment to crew members who were useful around the ship and would let them out of their rooms. Nikolsky and one other person had a room to themselves, while the other 18 men had to spend their time in a single stuffy compartment. It was so hot that they barely slept and their mattresses soaked up what felt like gallons of sweat every night.

Nikolsky started planning an escape. He convinced the pirates that in order to get the full ransom, they had to return the ship in perfect condition, so he asked for permission for a few of the sailors to start cleaning up and maintaining the vessel. In reality, they were looking for metal supplies to hide in different parts of the ship in order to eventually disarm the pirates and break free. The scheme failed: one day before the planned mutiny, the pirates caught onto something and separated the sailors into different rooms. 

Meanwhile, Nikolsky was falling out of favor among some of the captives. He is convinced they began to conspire against him, with a sailor named Denis Shapovalov allegedly heading the effort. Nikolsky said they planned to poison him with clonidine, but a sailor named Alexei Kocherga warned him of this plan before the fateful dinner was to take place. Tarasov says it was all a prank: he claims the clonidine they wanted to add to Nikolsky’s food was to cause him a bit of constipation — nothing more.

Money falling from the sky

On February 4, 2009, Tarasov saw money falling from the sky. There were two bright orange bags, with $1.6 million in each. They were dropped out of an airplane onto the water.

Before the drop, the people in the airplane had asked to see that the crew was alive and well, and the pirates lined the crew up on deck. The pirates got in their motorboats, went up to the floating bags, brought them back onto the deck of the MV Faina, and spent the entire day counting and dividing up the money. Tarasov says that dozens of other people they had never seen before also showed up on the ship to collect their share of the profits.

Tarasov and Nikolsky told Meduza that no one ever explained to them who paid the ransom. The sailors concluded it must be “money from Ukrainian oligarchs.” The Ukrainian media reported that most of the sum was given by Ukrainian billionaire Victor Pinchuk, and the rest came from Vadim Alperin, the ship’s owner. Alperin declined to comment.

When the pirates left the ship, the crew sailed to Mombasa, Kenya, escorted by the U.S. Navy. The trip took one week. As soon as they arrived in Mombasa, the exhausted crew observed a moment of silence for their deceased captain.

Anton Tarasov now lives in Gatchina, a small town outside St. Petersburg. He is happy to talk about those four months on the Faina and cracks jokes about the ordeal. He has not seen any of his crewmates since they were released, but keeps in touch with them. Most of the Ukrainian sailors continue to work on the seas, even though Tarasov says they “swore to God they’d never do it again.” Tarasov took one more job on a ship after Somalia and then quit. Now he works as an excavator operator at a construction site.

Nikolsky also stopped taking jobs on ships. He says he considered continuing the work, but his son asked him not to. He remarried and works at the St. Petersburg port. He is 71 years old and plays volleyball every weekend.

The Ukrainian sailors declined to answer Meduza’s questions. Their Russian colleagues say that one of them ended up spending some time in a psychiatric hospital. In the past four years, he's posted only one thing on his VKontakte page: a link to a game called “Pirate Treasures.” He’s made it to level 173.