Fleeing Sanctions, Oligarchs Seek Safe Ports for Superyachts

WASHINGTON — 

The superyacht Dilbar stretches nearly 140 meters in length. It has two helipads, berths for more than 130 people and a 25-meter swimming pool that itself can accommodate another superyacht.

Dilbar was launched in 2016 at a reported cost of more than $648 million. Five years later, its purported owner, the Kremlin-aligned Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov, was already dissatisfied. He sent the vessel to a German shipyard last fall for a retrofit reportedly costing several hundred million dollars.

Dilbar was in drydock on Thursday when the United States and European Union announced economic sanctions against Usmanov — a metals magnate and early investor in Facebook — over his ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin and in retaliation for the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.

“We are joining with our European allies to find and seize your yachts, your luxury apartments, your private jets,” President Joe Biden said during his State of the Union speech Tuesday night, addressing Russian oligarchs. “We are coming for your ill-begotten gains.”

Seizing the behemoth boats could prove challenging. Russian billionaires have had decades to shield their money and assets in the West from governments that might try to tax or seize them.

Several media outlets reported last week that German authorities had impounded the Dilbar. But a spokesperson for Hamburg state’s economy ministry told The Associated Press no such action had yet been taken because it had been unable to establish ownership of the yacht.

Dilbar is flagged in the Cayman Islands and registered to a holding company in Malta, banking havens where the global ultra-rich often park their wealth.

The Stella Maris yacht belonging to Rashid Sardarov is docked in Nice, France, Tuesday, March 1, 2022.

Working with the U.K.-based yacht valuation firm VesselsValue, the AP compiled a list of 56 superyachts — generally defined as luxury vessels exceeding 24 meters in length — believed to be owned by a few dozen Kremlin-aligned oligarchs. The yachts have a combined market value estimated at more than $5.4 billion.

The AP then used two online services — VesselFinder and MarineTraffic — to plot the last known locations of the yachts as relayed by their onboard tracking beacons.

Many are anchored in the Mediterranean and Caribbean. But more than a dozen were underway or had already arrived in remote ports in small nations such as the Maldives and Montenegro, potentially beyond the reach of Western sanctions. Three had gone dark, their transponders last pinging just outside the Bosporus in Turkey — gateway to the Black Sea and the southern Russian ports of Sochi and Novorossiysk.

Graceful, a German-built Russian-flagged superyacht believed to belong to Putin, left a repair yard in Hamburg, Germany, on Feb. 7, two weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine. It is now moored in the Russian Baltic port of Kaliningrad, beyond the reach of Western sanctions imposed against him this past week.

French authorities seized the superyacht Amore Vero on Thursday in the Mediterranean resort town of La Ciotat. The boat is believed to belong to Igor Sechin, a Putin ally who runs Russian oil giant Rosneft, which has been on the U.S. sanctions list since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.

The French Finance Ministry said in a statement that customs authorities boarded the 88-meter Amore Vero and discovered its crew was preparing for an urgent departure, even though planned repair work wasn’t finished.

The 65-meter Lady M was seized by Italian authorities Friday while moored in the Riveria port town of Imperia. In a tweet announcing the seizure, a spokesman for Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi said the yacht was the property of sanctioned steel baron Alexei Mordashov, listed as Russia’s wealthiest man with a fortune of about $30 billion.

But Mordashov’s larger superyacht, the 141-meter Nord, was safely at anchor on Friday in the Seychelles, a tropical island chain in the Indian Ocean not under the jurisdiction of U.S. or EU sanctions. Among the world’s biggest superyachts, Nord has a market value of $500 million.

“No, no self-respecting Russian oligarch would be without a superyacht,” said William Browder, a U.S.-born and now London-based financier who worked in Moscow for years before becoming one of the Putin regime’s most vocal foreign critics.

The yacht Amore Vero is docked in the Mediterranean resort of La Ciotat, France, March 3, 2022.

Russian metals and petroleum magnate Roman Abramovich is believed to have bought or built at least seven of the world’s largest yachts, some of which he has since sold off to other oligarchs.

Dennis Cauiser, a superyacht analyst with VesselsFinder, said the escalating U.S. and EU sanctions on Putin-aligned oligarchs and Russian banks have sent a chill through the industry, with boatbuilders and staff worried they won’t be paid. It can cost upwards of $50 million a year to crew, fuel and maintain a superyacht.

Most of the Russians on the annual Forbes list of billionaires have not yet been sanctioned by the United States and its allies, and their superyachts are still crushing the world’s oceans. The 72-meter-long Stella Maris, which was seen by an AP journalist docked this past week in Nice, France, is believed to be owned by Rashid Sardarov, a Russian billionaire oil and gas magnate.

The crash of the ruble and the tanking of Moscow stock market have depleted the fortunes of Russia’s elite. Cauiser said he expects some oligarch superyachts will soon quietly be listed by brokers at fire-sale prices.

On Thursday, the U.S. Treasury Department issued a new round of sanctions that included news release citing Usmanov’s close ties to Putin and photos of Dilbar and the oligarch’s private jet, a custom-built 64-meter Airbus A340-300 passenger liner.

“I believe that such a decision is unfair and the reasons employed to justify the sanctions are a set of false and defamatory allegations damaging my honor, dignity and business reputation,” Usmanov said in a statement issued through the website of the International Fencing Federation, of which he has served as president since 2008.

Abramovich has not yet been sanctioned. Members of the British Parliament have criticized Prime Minister Boris Johnson for not going after Abramovich’s U.K.-based assets, which include the professional soccer club Chelsea. Under mounting pressure, the oligarch announced this past week he would sell the $2.5 billion team and give the net proceeds “for the benefit of all victims of the war in Ukraine.”

Meanwhile, location transponders showed the 162-meter Solaris — launched by Abramovich in 2010 with an undersea bay that reportedly holds a mini-sub – was moored in Barcelona, Spain, on Saturday. Abramovich’s $600 million Eclipse, eight stories tall and on the water since last year, set sail from St. Maarten late Thursday and is under way in the Caribbean Sea, destination undisclosed.

China Asks Russia to Keep Ukraine's Nuclear Plants Safe

NEW DELHI — 

China has issued a call urging “all sides” to ensure the safety of nuclear facilities in Ukraine, reflecting the nation’s unease over Russia’s shelling of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, Europe’s largest.

“We will monitor the situation and call on all sides to exercise restraint, avoid escalation and ensure the safety of relevant nuclear facilities,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry said following the overnight attack, which sparked a fire at the Ukrainian compound.

The foreign ministry spokesman, Wang Wenbin, refused to condemn the Russian attack or call it an invasion. That is consistent with the neutral stance that China has adopted on the issue at the recent meetings at the United Nations.

China does not want to be seen as a country condoning any military act that would endanger safety at a nuclear power plant, said a Chinese scholar who did not wish to be identified.

“We have our own technology for nuclear plants, the Hualong One technology, which we have begun to export,” he said.

FILE – A dome is installed over a Hualong One nuclear power unit at Fangchenggang nuclear power plant in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China, May 23, 2018. (Photo provided by Fangchenggang nuclear power plant and released by China Daily via Reuters)

China signed an agreement with Argentina in January to build the Atucha III nuclear power plant at a cost of $8 billion. It will be the second major export of Hualong One technology, a rival to the U.S. Westinghouse technology, after Beijing built a nuclear power plant in Pakistan under the Belt and Road Initiative.

China was among the first to ask the International Atomic Energy Agency to take immediate steps to ensure the safety of nuclear facilities in Ukraine amid the Russian invasion. Ukraine has 15 nuclear reactors at four sites.

“China is concerned about the safety, security and safeguards of nuclear facilities in Ukraine,” China’s envoy at the IAEA, Wang Qun Wang, was quoted as saying by the Chinese mission in Vienna.

Speaking at the IAEA meeting on Wednesday, the envoy said, “The responsibility for nuclear safety and security rests with sovereign states, and related issues should be handled through established procedures.

“We hope the relevant parties will act cautiously to avoid causing man-made nuclear safety and security incidents,” he said. “The IAEA should also take full consideration of the security situation in Ukraine in accordance with its mandate and properly address the issue of security protection in Ukraine.”

Russian soldiers earlier took over Ukraine’s decommissioned Chernobyl power plant, site of a nuclear accident in 1986, raising fears about the safety of other nuclear facilities in Ukraine.

FILE – A giant protective dome built over the destroyed fourth reactor of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant is seen April 13, 2021.

In another significant move, the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank has put a hold on its financial plans in Russia and Belarus, a close ally of Moscow. Those plans are now under review.

In a statement, the Beijing-headquartered AIIB said bank management was taking steps to safeguard its financial position in light of the evolving economic and financial situation.

“Under these circumstances, and in the best interests of the bank, management has decided that all activities relating to Russia and Belarus are on hold and under review.”

The newborn baby, safe from the coronavirus... even more so with the maternal vaccine

The newborn baby, safe from the coronavirus… even more so with the mother’s vaccines

“It is also important to underline that the few infections from the mother to the baby, whether during pregnancy or childbirth, 15 cases of the 2,874 tested, have been diagnosed as a mild covid infection and have always evolved positively and without complications. », rounds up the also head of the Neonatology Service of the Gregorio Marañón University General Hospital in Madrid.

“And for greater health satisfaction, the vaccines against this virus and its different mutations, now with omicron on the crest of the wave, have meant a before and after when pregnant women with coronavirus develop respiratory failure: we have gone from clinical symptoms severe to mild clinical pictures”, highlights the doctor from Madrid.

“As if that were not enough, it should be added that of the 162 cases of postnatal infection, after childbirth, both in the hospital setting and in the family home, only 8% of the babies had symptoms for which their admission to care was advisable. intensive due to suffering, most of them, previous risk factors, such as heart disease and prematurity”.

seNeo recommends vaccination and extreme prevention measures against coronavirus in all cases. Pregnant women should not live in a bubble, but should systematically avoid pandemic infection vectors

Data and keys of the seNeo covid registry on the newborn

The registry of covid cases of the Spanish Society of Neonatology is created to know the impact of SARS-Cov-2 infection in newborns; a set of “own data” compiled both from infected mothers and their newborns -perinatal situation- and from those other babies who were infected in the postnatal period.

135 Spanish public and private hospitals collaborate meticulously in the project.

The main objective of this seNeo registry is to compute all the clinical statistics on pregnancies and births during the pandemic in order to prepare a series of recommendations based on scientific evidence.

«This exhaustive database, fed by hundreds of professionals, who work very hard, coordinated by the seNeo infectious diseases group, with the Dr. Belen Fernandez Colomer of the Central Hospital of Asturias at the helm, improves our strategy against a disease unknown at the beginning of 2020 and unheard of to date»

Dr. Manuel Sánchez Luna, president of the Spanish Society of Neonatology

4,737 perinatal cases of covid mothers

Since the cases began to be assessed during the first wave of COVID-19, the profile of pregnant women indicates that they have a mean age of 32 years and 73% of them were previously healthy, despite showing a high prevalence of obesity.

In 80% of the 4,737 cases analyzed, the pregnant women did not suffer from gestational pathologies; being the preeclampsia the most frequent complication in this group of women.

“Mothers who were admitted to the ICU for covid developed the disease in the third trimester, probably due to greater respiratory compromise. More cases of obesity and preeclampsia were described in this group of patients”, Dr. Sánchez Luna reiterates.

“We must bear in mind – he explains – that severe forms of covid are more common among pregnant women than in non-pregnant women. Still, 50% of recorded infections were asymptomatic.”

Throughout the period studied, the cesarean section rate has stood at 23% nationwide, a lower percentage than the pre-pandemic rate, which was 25% in 2019.

“It is likely that virus mutations have something to do with these data, but also, very likely, vaccination, since this preventive measure has modified the severity profile, with the need for admission to the ICU now being very infrequent. of vaccinated pregnant women”, testifies.

Late fetal death -from the 28th week of gestation, according to the WHO- has been very low: 2.8 per thousand pregnancies, also lower than the pre-pandemic rate.

The overall rate of prematurityfortunately, has been declining throughout the pandemic.

“At the beginning it was very high, 26.5%, but currently it is less than 5% and it is late prematurity (34 to 37 weeks), usually due to the need to improve the respiratory situation of the mother in the most severe cases” , highlights.

“We are pleased to say that the 94.5% of newborns have done rooming-in with his mother, without complications, avoiding the separation of both. When this mother-baby union has not been possible, it has been due to covid symptoms that forced us to separate them; that yes, the minimum possible time».

Dr. Manuel Sanchez Luna

“It is interesting to see -he points out- how the children of covid mothers behave at birth in the same way as the children of non-covid mothers,” he mentions.

Skin-to-skin contact was carried out in 78% of the deliveries and the delayed clamping of the umbilical cord in 68% of cases.

When the presence of antibodies in the mother has been determined, these have been detected in 85% of her babies. In 2.2% of those born without symptoms, the PCR was positive. In boys and girls with symptoms, the positivity in PCR was similar to the asymptomatic ones.

Of the 2,874 tested, only in 15 cases the PCR was persistently positive. The final rate of infection was 1% in newborns..

‘It is very interesting to see how the infection rate in the babies who were not separated from their mothers turned out to be lower than that in the group of babies who had to be separated from their mothers; and in addition, in those who continued breastfeeding the rate was lower than those who received donated milk from other mothers»

Dr. Manuel Sanchez Luna

On the whole, the breastfeeding rate was 88%one more success of the recommendations of the Spanish Society of Neonatology.

162 postnatal cases, covid infections after childbirth

From 54 hospitals, 162 cases of babies with postnatal infection have been reported, either in the health field or in the family home. There is a decrease in the number of cases in recent months. Symptoms have generally been mild; some did not require admission.

8% were admitted to the neonatal ICU, most with previous risk factors such as prematurity or heart disease. The most frequent symptom was fever, irritability and rhinorrhea -runny nose-.

In addition, they showed little analytical alteration and the radiological tests showed only some cases of non-specific infiltration -viral pneumonia-«.

“Most postnatal infections have occurred in the family home and very few have been infected in the hospital by their parents or by health personnel, most of them, moreover, in the first wave.

These cases of neonatal infection, in general, have been mild and with a good prognosis, without added problems in the medium and long term.

“In summary, in both cases, perinatal and postnatal infection, we can say that these newborn babies have formed a low-risk group because their mothers have most likely protected them either through the placenta or through breastfeeding.”

“In this same sense, many of these babies have received antibodies against the coronavirus generated by the maternal vaccine. One of the reasons why the Spanish Society of Neonatology strictly recommends the vaccination of pregnant women. Vaccination protects mothers from SARS-CoV-2 in its most serious forms»

Dr. Manuel Sanchez Luna

Likewise, seNeo advises that the management of newborns of covid mothers, always taking extreme hygiene and safety measures, must be practically the same as the cases of babies of mothers without infection.

“It is essential to maintain the joint hospital stay, skin-to-skin contact and encourage breastfeeding. They are safe strategies for mothers and their babies«, Dr. Manuel Sánchez Luna concludes the interview.

Belarus Activists Flee to US, Say Europe Not Safe

NEW YORK — 

Speaking to VOA from his New York apartment, Dmitry Savchenko, 34, recalls the prosperous life he recently left behind.

“In Belarus, we had everything. My wife had several cafes. I had two businesses myself, some real estate, an apartment, a car,” he said.

Savchenko and his family had never intended to leave their home. But in the last few months, for him and many other Belarussian citizens, what was once unthinkable became a dire necessity.

“We were faced with a dilemma: either go to prison or run and hide in another country,” he said.

Long described as “Europe’s last dictatorship,” Belarus has been run for 27 years by Alexander Lukashenko. But in the run-up to the 2020 presidential elections, there was a sense among his opponents that he was politically vulnerable.

FILE – Belarus’ security service agents and riot police officers detain an opposition supporter in Minsk on July 14, 2020, after the country’s central electoral commission refused to register the main rivals to President Alexander Lukashenko as candidates for the country’s presidential election in August.

Savchenko says he has been apolitical his entire life, but in those months he, like many others, was “smelling change in the air,” inspired by the caliber and diversity of presidential candidates eager to challenge Lukashenko’s authoritarian rule.

Two months before election day, August 9, the hopeful Belarusian entrepreneur registered as an independent observer for the polls.

But Savchenko was setting himself up for a major disappointment.

On the day of the vote, Savchenko chronicled numerous irregularities in his precinct, which reached their climax with the members of the elections committee — which normally consist of regime loyalists — not letting the independent observers monitor the process in person. The elections committee members then fled the building with the ballots through the backdoor, escorted by the local police, Savchenko says.

FILE – Belarusian law enforcement officers stand guard during a rally of opposition supporters following the presidential election in Minsk, Belarus, Aug. 10, 2020.

Hearing hundreds of stories like Savchenko’s from friends and family — as well as from independent media — ordinary Belarusians took to the streets. The country saw a rise of civic awareness unprecedented in its history. In Minsk alone, about 200,000 people came out for a peaceful protest on one of the post-election weekends.

And then the violence began.

Trying to drown people’s enthusiasm, Lukashenko, who baselessly claimed victory with more than 80% of the vote, unleashed a wave of repression and violence against the protesters. Video and photo evidence of police brutality, as well as of demonstrators’ mutilated bodies, made headlines around the world.

“Some of my friends participated in those protests,” Savchenko said. “It was heart-wrenching to even look at them (after their release from jail).”

Those who appeared to have suffered the most were those sent to the infamous Okrestina detention center in the country’s capital where, according to numerous detainee accounts, they were beaten and tortured for hours and not given food or water for days.

“Photos of the people who were released from the Okrestina detention center looked like the photos of people who came from war,” Savchenko added. “And I denounce that. Because people came out (to protest) unarmed.”

FILE – People detained during rallies of opposition supporters, who accuse Alexander Lukashenko of falsifying the polls in the presidential election, show bruises as they leave the Okrestina prison in Minsk, Aug. 14, 2020.

Savchenko says he is determined to punish those who so flagrantly abused the law.

“I am gathering proof of falsifications of the election results, abuse of police authority. And I decided that I will bring them to justice no matter where I am,” he said.

He sent the incriminating evidence he had gathered to BYPOL, an independent union of Belarusian ex-security officers whose mission is to keep a registry of crimes committed by the Lukashenko regime.

The state’s crackdown drew international condemnation, but Savchenko says that did not stop the authorities from methodically targeting their critics after the elections.

“At first, the authorities cracked down on most vocal protesters, then on independent media. After that they started laying off state officials who — how should I put it — didn’t vote for ‘the right candidate.’ Slowly but surely, they got to the people who were election observers,” he said.

For days, he was harassed and intimidated, then detained and beaten by the police. The authorities threatened to send his 5-year-old son to an orphanage.

So he and his family ran. First to Moscow, then all the way to Mexico City, then to Tijuana, then to the United States, where they are seeking political asylum.

Washington-based immigration lawyer Elizabeth Krukova specializes in providing legal help to asylum-seekers from the countries of the former Soviet Union. She says there are many others like the Savchenko family.

“We’ve seen a number of these cases and a big increase in the number of cases coming from Belarus specifically,” she said.

FILE – Demonstrators paste photos of opposition supporters killed during the post-election protests on the Okrestina prison wall during a rally demanding to free jailed activists of the opposition in Minsk, Oct. 4, 2020.

VOA spoke with several Belarusian asylum-seekers who arrived in the United States from the southern border following the post-election crackdown. They all spoke of intimidation, detainment and beatings by police back home.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection data shows a steady increase in the number of encounters of Belarusian migrants by the southwest border CBP officers — from three in October 2020 to 123 in September 2021.

Savchenko says the main reason his family chose to travel to the U.S. instead of Europe is safety.

“There is a network of Russian and Belarusian agents that are active in the countries neighboring Belarus, as well as in some EU states,” he said.

FILE – A Belarusian dog handler checks luggage off a Ryanair airplane parked on Minsk international airport’s apron in Minsk, May 23, 2021.

Belarusian officials demonstrated their relentless pursuit of critics when they forced a civilian Ryanair flight to land in Minsk last year and arrested an opposition blogger, Roman Protasevich. Another exiled Belarusian activist, Vitaly Shishov, was found hanged in a park near his home in Kyiv, an unsolved case widely seen as the work of Minsk’s clandestine services.

John Sipher, the former CIA deputy chief of station in Europe, still views Europe as relatively safe but says the fears of dissidents are not groundless.

He says horror stories of kidnappings and murders spread among dissidents “like wildfires.”

“If there are a few cases where Belarusians are hunted down or arrested, or brought back to Minsk, then it becomes a story that makes its way around that community,” Sipher said.

With Russian troops now massing in Belarus and more on the border of Ukraine, experts see the region’s authoritarian leaders becoming more collaborative, putting their critics at greater risk.

“Since Lukashenko’s crackdown in the last year or so, he is going to be looking for more opportunities to assist (Russian President Vladimir) Putin and Putin is going to be looking for means to work with Belarusians on these issues,” Sipher said.

Experts say whether an activist is in danger depends on how high their name is on the Belarusian KGB’s priorities list. But it’s a guessing game no one on the list wants to play.

VOA’s Aline Barros contributed to this report.

Belarus Activists Flee to the US, Say Europe Not Safe

The continuing crackdown on pro-democracy activists following the 2020 presidential elections in Belarus has spurred a wave of political asylum seekers. VOA’s Igor Tsikhanenka spoke with some who undertook a long and uncertain journey to Mexico and on to the United States in recent months. Some of them say they had no other choice because they no longer feel safe even in the European Union. Camera: Aaron Fedor