‘We were built for this mission.’ About 300 soldiers from Fort Knox to be deployed to Europe
Karla Ward – March 4, 2022
The Associated Press
As Russia’s war on Ukraine continues, about 300 soldiers stationed at Fort Knox are being deployed to Germany and Poland, and one of the goals of the deployment is to “deter further Russian aggression,” the Army says.
In support of the United States’ NATO allies, the Army said it is deploying the main headquarters of its Victory Corps, or V Corps, which was set up at Fort Knox in 2020. The corps already has soldiers stationed at an operational command post in Poznan, Poland.
The Army said Thursday that the additional deployment will “build readiness, improve interoperability, reinforce allies and deter further Russian aggression.”
“Victory Corps is ready and prepared to support the orders of the President, and demonstrate our commitment to our NATO allies,” V Corps’ commanding general, Lt. Gen. John S. Kolasheski, said in the release. “As America’s Forward Deployed Corps, we were built for this mission.”
In a separate media advisory Friday, the Army said V Corps soldiers will be ready to move out Monday, transitioning the corps’ headquarters from Fort Knox to Europe.
“The V Corps main headquarters will complement the forward headquarters located in Poland,” the advisory stated. “This will provide a more robust presence in Europe and enable the Corps to synchronize current contingency operations, support the ongoing mission to reinforce NATO’s eastern flank and coordinate multinational exercises across the continent.”
The effort is being coordinated with the governments of Germany and Poland, and once deployed, the soldiers will be under the command of U.S. Army Europe and Africa, the Army said.
“Throughout our unit’s history, we have stood as guardians of peace in Europe and we once again proudly answer the nation’s call,” Kolasheski said in the release.
The V Corps was founded during World War I and served in France. In World War II, its soldiers took part in the D Day invasion and helped liberate Europe. The Army says the corps “defended Western Europe during the Cold War” and served in the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan.
When the Army announced in 2020 that V Corps was being reactivated with headquarters at Fort Knox, it said the corps would have about 635 soldiers, about 200 of whom would be rotating through the post in Europe.
NATO brings Finland, Sweden on board for all Ukraine conflict discussions
Vivienne Machi – March 4, 2022
JOHN THYS
STUTTGART, Germany – From now on, NATO is sharing all information pertaining to the ongoing war in Ukraine with close partners Sweden and Finland, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg announced Friday.
“In response to Russia’s aggression, we have decided to strengthen our coordination and information-sharing with Finland and Sweden,” Stoltenberg said at a press conference in Brussels, adding, “Both countries are now taking part in all NATO consultations about the crisis.”
The briefing occurred just before foreign ministers from NATO’s 30 member-nations gathered to discuss Russia’s war on Ukraine, with leaders from Helsinki, Stockholm, and the European Union also in attendance.
Stoltenberg’s announcement comes as calls have mounted for the two Nordic countries to formally join the alliance. Finland and Sweden are two of six Enhanced Opportunity Partners with NATO, representing the closest partnership a nation can have with the alliance without being a member. The other four EOPs are Australia, Georgia, Jordan, and Ukraine – the latter being selected in 2020.
Helsinki and Stockholm have been considered to be in a tier of their own within the EOPs. That’s thanks to “the sophistication of their militaries, the stability of their democratic political systems, and their critical geography of the Baltic Sea bridging NATO’s Nordic and Baltic countries,” analysts Anna Wieslander and Christopher Skaluba wrote in a March 3 report for the Atlantic Council.
The two nations have traditionally walked a fine line between lauding their close relationship to NATO, while maintaining that their citizens want to keep out of the alliance. But the report cites recent polls showing that up to 53 percent of Finns now support joining NATO – compared to only 19 percent in support in 2017. Meanwhile, Swedes are now 41 percent in support of joining the alliance, compared to 35 percent since the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014.
“Events on the ground in Ukraine will likely dictate whether and how soon Sweden and Finland apply for NATO membership, and how readily the alliance might admit them,” Wieslander and Skaluba wrote. “But with the contours of European security irrevocably altered since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the direction of thinking in both countries – especially Finland – is getting clearer by the day.”
Stoltenberg also shared that the NATO member-nations are now contemplating a more long-term increase to their military presence along the Eastern flank.
The alliance has dedicated a considerable presence in countries including Poland, Romania, and Estonia in response to Russian aggression towards Ukraine, with over 130 fighter jets and over 200 ships positioned to protect the 1 billion citizens across its 30 member states from potential attack, he added.
“We are now seriously considering a significant increase of our presence, both in more troops, [and] with more air defense,” he said. That discussion began Friday during the foreign ministers meeting, and will continue when NATO defense ministers meet on March 16.
“We have some time – not a lot, but some time – to make that more long-term decision,” he said.
The alliance also wants to step up its support for Georgia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, after determining that these two nations are, like Ukraine, at risk of “even more intervention, subversion or even attack by the Russian Armed Forces,” Stoltenberg said. The “broad agreement” to increase support could include more joint activities and exercises, and scaling up support for national defense and security institutions.
Stoltenberg restated that NATO is not seeking a war with Russia, and said foreign ministers on Friday rejected the idea to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine.
“Our core task is to keep our 30 nations safe,” he said. “We are not part of this conflict, and we have a responsibility to ensure it does not escalate and spread beyond Ukraine. Because that would be even more devastating and more dangerous.”
Thousands of Russians are rushing to flee the country ahead of this weekend, as rumors swirl that Vladimir Putin could soon declare martial law, close the borders and crack down even harder on domestic dissent.
Why it matters: For as devastating as the humanitarian situation in Ukraine has become, widespread suffering is rapidly arriving at Russia’s own doorstep.
More than 8,000 people have already been detained at anti-war protests since Feb. 24, according to the independent monitor OVD-Info.
Russia’s Duma has passed a law making the spread of “fake news” about the Russian military punishable by up to 15 years in prison.
The last pillars of Russia’s already-limited independent press were forced to close under pressure from the Kremlin this week.
Russia’s state communications watchdog blocked the websites of the BBC, Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Deutsche Welle and other foreign media outlets for spreading “fake” information.
What to watch: Russia’s second-largest airline announced it will cease all international flights from tomorrow, as Russia’s upper house of parliament meets for an emergency session that many fear could mark the descent of a new Iron Curtain.
Pentagon: ‘Vast majority’ of $350M in lethal aid to Ukraine has been delivered
March 4, 2022
The “vast majority” of a $350 million military aid package the U.S. promised to send Ukraine has reached the country, with most of the rest to be delivered within the next week, a senior U.S. defense official said Friday.
The package, approved by the White House on Feb. 26, two days after the Russian invasion, was fast-tracked after it was categorized as “a presidential drawdown,” a label that allows it to forego congressional notification, the official said.
About $240 million worth of the package has made it to Ukraine, including “the most-needed capabilities, like anti-armor capabilities,” they said.
The rest should arrive within days or weeks “but not longer,” the official added.
Washington is sending Kyiv equipment that it has also sent in the past so that the Ukrainians can use it “proficiently,” without any new training.
“I think all of us have been tremendously impressed by how effectively the Ukrainian Armed Forces have been using the equipment that we’ve provided them,” the official said, noting that “Kremlin watchers have also been surprised by this, and how they have slowed the Russian advance and performed extremely well on the battlefield.”
The U.S. has contributed more than $1 billion to help Ukraine’s military over the past year and has pledged more as Russia’s violent attack on the country drags on.
Washington has reportedly sent hundreds of Stinger missiles as part of the $350 million package, while the White House on Wednesday asked Congress to authorize an additional $10 billion in security, humanitarian and economic assistance for the country.
Another 14 countries have also contributed lethal aid to Kyiv since Moscow launched the incursion last week. The official said U.S. European Command has been coordinating the delivery of that assistance from other countries “to ensure that we are using our resources to maximum efficiency to support the Ukrainians in an organized way.”
A second defense official told reporters the weapons were getting into Ukraine through “multiple venues.”
“There are multiple venues through which the support is getting to the Ukrainians on the ground,” they said. “I really don’t want to get more specific than that. We want to be able to continue to help the Ukrainians as much and for as long as we can … so we’re going to be very careful about how we talk about how that support is getting into their hands.”
The second official also said the package is “the highest single drawdown authority in our history.”
Biden Quietly Casts Trump As The New Face Of Putin In America
S.V. Date – March 4, 2022
(Photo: Scott Olson via Getty Images)
SUPERIOR, Wisc. – President Joe Biden failed to bring up the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol incited by his predecessor in his State of the Union speech, but less than a day later essentially made Donald Trump, without ever mentioning his name, the American face of Russia’s dictator.
“Vladimir Putin was counting on being able to split up the United States,” Biden said, and proceeded to describe the Trump-inspired mob that attacked the Capitol with the goal of overturning the 2020 election.
“Look, how would you feel if you saw crowds storm and break down the doors of the British Parliament, kill five cops, injure 145 ― or the German Bundestag or the Italian Parliament? I think you’d wonder,” he said. “Well, that’s what the rest of the world saw. It’s not who we are. And now, we’re proving, under pressure, that we are not that country. We’re united.”
The little-noticed remarks at the University of Wisconsin-Superior student union came just 18 hours after Biden did not mention the Jan. 6 attack at all in his hourlong State of the Union address to Congress and the nation.
Polls show that Americans are no longer as concerned about the attempt to forcibly keep Trump in power as they were immediately afterward. Indeed, Americans generally, and more so Republicans and independents, are also less inclined to believe that Trump was responsible for the attack than they were a year ago.
Republican pollster Neil Newhouse said that if Biden is hoping to stoke interest in Jan. 6, it is not likely to work.
“The Jan. 6 events are already baked into voters’ minds, and I have a hard time believing that any new revelations will impact attitudes one way or another,” he said. “That’s especially true when Americans are focused on other current event and issues, like Ukraine, inflation, crime and the economy.”
Perhaps appreciating where public sentiment is today, Biden actually drew an explicit link between Jan. 6 and Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. He said Putin assumed that his long efforts to sow division in the West, including the United States, would let him get away with seizing Russia’s neighbor.
“We were able to make sure we kept Europe united and the free world united,” Biden said. “In my view, he did what he did because he thought he could split NATO, split Europe, and split the United States. We’re going to demonstrate to the whole world no one can split this country.”
Deputy White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, when asked why Biden had not talked about Jan. 6 in his State of the Union, told reporters Wednesday that he has spoken about it many times, including a lengthy speech on the first anniversary of the attack earlier this year.
One White House official said on condition of anonymity that Biden would continue to discuss Jan. 6 as needed. And press secretary Jen Psaki on Thursday, responding to a question about the House Jan. 6 committee, repeated Biden’s previous statements that Jan. 6 was a uniquely dangerous event in the nation’s history caused by the sitting president at the time, and needed to be treated as such.
Trump, who now is under investigation in multiple jurisdictions for his post-election actions, was elected with the open help of Putin in 2016. The Russian leader’s intelligence agencies stole documents from the campaign of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and made them available. Trump used that material daily during the final month before Election Day, even though he knew it had been stolen for him by Putin’s spies.
Putin also mounted a propaganda campaign using social media to generate false stories about Clinton with the goal of depressing Democratic turnout, according to both Special Counsel Robert Mueller as well as the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Four years later, Russia was again working for Trump, and then after his loss helped amplify his lies that the election had been “stolen” from him ― lies that fomented the anger among Trump’s followers that culminated in the violent attack on Jan. 6.
Since then, Russian state media, “troll farms” and even Putin himself have been spreading Trump’s claims that the supporters who were arrested for their participation that day are “political prisoners” and are being unfairly persecuted.
Trump, despite losing the election by 7 million votes nationally and 306-232 in the Electoral College, became the first president in more than two centuries of elections to refuse to hand over power peacefully. His incitement of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol ― his last-ditch attempt to remain in office ― led to the deaths of five people, including one police officer, injured another 140 officers and led to four police suicides.
That attempt to remain in power notwithstanding his loss has sparked both state and federal investigations.
The district attorney in Fulton County, Georgia, has impaneled a special grand jury just to focus on Trump’s attempt to coerce state officials to “find” enough votes to overturn his loss of that state to Biden in 2020.
And the House Jan. 6 committee has been subpoenaing more and more former and current Trump aides to determine his precise role in that day’s events, while the Department of Justice has confirmed that it is investigating at least one element of Trump’s scheme to remain in power: the submission of fake Trump “electors” in states that Biden won.
This week, the Jan. 6 committee filed a lengthy brief in federal court in California in a lawsuit filed by a pro-Trump lawyer who wrote a memo arguing that Vice President Mike Pence had the unilateral ability to declare Trump the winner. That lawyer, John Eastman, is now trying to block the release of his emails on the topic. In the 221-page document, the committee told the judge that the lawyer cannot cite attorney-client privilege because of, among other reasons, the “crime-fraud” exception to that rule.
“The select committee … has a good-faith basis for concluding that the president and members of his campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States,” the committee’s lawyers wrote.
In response, Trump has asked his followers to stage “the biggest protests we have ever had in Washington, D.C., in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere” if prosecutors come after him, “because our country and our elections are corrupt.”
Despite this, Trump remains the dominant figure in the Republican Party and is openly speaking about running for the presidency again in 2024.
Why Russian oil can’t find buyers even as crude soars above $100 a barrel
By Willian Watts – March 4, 2022
‘Market participants are simply refusing to deal in Russian oil’: economist
The oil harbor in Novorossiysk on the Black Sea, Russia’s largest port. LUCIE GODEAU/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
Call it a “buyers strike” or “self-sanctioning,” but Russian crude is being shunned in the physical market even as a scramble for barrels sends oil futures to their highest levels in years.
“The current central bank sanctions and selective SWIFT action is causing major risk aversion by key market participants,” said Helima Croft, head of global commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets, in a Thursday note.
The U.S. and its allies have imposed tough sanctions on major Russian banks, blocking them from the crucial SWIFT interbank messaging service, and have also targeted the nation’s central bank. The efforts are aimed at effectively ejecting Russia from the global financial system in response to Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine.
However, they have so far included carve-outs for Russia’s energy exports amid worries over surging inflation.
Nevertheless, energy companies, trading houses, shipping companies, and banks have all backed away from the Russian energy business, Croft noted, adding that the country’s “already staggering” export losses could hit 3 million to 4 million barrels a day if Western powers follow through and impose the sort of energy-focused “secondary sanctions” that were aimed at Iran.
News reports have noted the struggle to clear Russian crude in the physical market. Bloomberg reported Thursday that commodity-trading giant Trafigura Group offered to sell a cargo of Russia’s flagship Urals crude at a record discount of $22.70 to Dated Brent, a global benchmark for physical oil transactions, but received no bids.
Oil futures ended lower Thursday after the U.S. benchmark CL.1, -0.59% hit a nearly 14-year intraday high of $116.57 a barrel in early trade. Brent crude BRN00, -0.05% also finished lower after hitting a session high at $119.84 a barrel, its highest since 2014.
Meanwhile, a growing premium for nearby oil futures contracts over later months — a phenomenon known as backwardation in commodities trading lingo — underlines how worried traders are about the ability to secure crude in the near term.
The premium for May Brent over the contract for delivery nine months later temporarily topped $20 a barrel, a level not seen since the 1990s, noted Edoardo Campanella, an economist at UniCredit Bank in Milan.
That geopolitical risk premium takes into account not only the risk of damage to oil facilities due to military action or potential Western sanctions, but also reflects soaring insurance costs to ship Russian oil. He observed that freight rates for oil coming out of both the Black Sea and Baltic sea more than tripling over the space of a few days as crude-oil buyers struggled to find shippers willing to send vessels into Russian ports (see chart below).
UNICREDIT
“This is part of a broader phenomenon of ‘self-sanctioning,’” he wrote. “Market participants are simply refusing to deal in Russian oil, even if Western governments allow it within the sanctions they have imposed on Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine.”
The possibility of energy-specific sanctions, meanwhile, can’t be ruled out as the war rages on, said RBC’s Croft.
“Such punitive measures would curtail buying by India and China, with their refiners being forced to choose between accessing U.S. capital markets and doing business with Russia,” she said. “Though concerns about inflation are running extremely high in Washington, we believe the energy carve-outs could soon prove untenable as the Russian conduct of the war grows more gruesome and the civilian toll climbs.”
‘They’re scared’: Wealthy Russians look to sell U.S. real estate everywhere from Fisher Island to Billionaires’ Row
Lance Lambert – March 4, 2022
President Joe Biden had a crystal clear message for Russian oligarchs: We’re coming for your assets.
“The United States Department of Justice is assembling a dedicated task force to go after the crimes of the Russian oligarchs. We’re joining with European allies to find and seize their yachts, their luxury apartments, their private jets. We’re coming for your ill-begotten gains,” Biden said Wednesday during the State of the Union. Just hours after that speech, French authorities announced they had seized a yacht linked to Russian oligarch Igor Sechin.
But it isn’t just Russian oligarchs who are on edge. Wealthy non-oligarch Russians are also fretting asset seizure. In the decades since the Soviet Union collapsed, rich Russians have poured gobs of money into American real estate. Now they’re worried they could get caught in the crossfire as the U.S. goes after Vladimir Putin’s allies.
Dolly Lenz, one of the most sought-after luxury real estate brokers in America, tells Fortune she’s getting inundated with inquiries from Russian clients who are considering selling their U.S. real estate holdings. Those luxury units—with a lot worth over $10 million—are in some of Miami’s and New York City’s most exclusive neighborhoods, including Billionaires’ Row in Manhattan.
“The heat is up. They’re scared that they’re going to have their real estate seized or potentially seized. Or linked to someone who is seized. They’re scared to death of [guilt] by association,” Lenz says. While she has yet to see a flood of Russian-owned luxury real estate hit the market, she says it’s on the horizon. “There are already more inquiries, and that’s how it starts. That’s how we know [a flood of listings by Russians] is coming.”
Not only are more ultrawealthy Russians looking to sell their properties, Lenz says, many want to cancel upcoming real estate projects and business deals, even if it means losing their deposit.
“We know of several deals where [Russian] buyers had put down money on new development—with significant deposits. And are deciding to not go through with the deal. That’s pretty bad…They told us they will walk away from the deposit if the climate stays this way,” Lenz says. In some cases, she says, they’d lose a deposit upwards of $15 million if they go through with exiting the real estate development deals.
But not everyone Fortune spoke with is seeing an influx of Russian luxury sellers. Stuart Siegel, global head of private office at Engel & Völkers Americas, says it’s too early to tell if the Ukraine invasion will correspond with a wave of Russians selling their U.S. real estate holdings. He says economic and political instability in Russia could even encourage some Russians—at least those who aren’t on federal watch lists—to cling to their American real estate holdings.
“In times of global turmoil, American real estate has always been viewed as a safe harbor,” Siegel says.
Russian billionaire warns the country has ‘never faced such a challenge’ as Western sanctions ramp up
Phil Rosen – March 3, 2022
People stand in line to withdraw money from an ATM in Moscow on Feb. 27.Victor Berzkin/Associated Press
The West’s sanctions will create a crisis that’s three times worse than Russia’s meltdown in 1998, warned Oleg Deripaska.
“The crisis will be most severe for a minimum of three years,” he said at an economic conference.
To avoid further economic turmoil, Russia needs to achieve peace with Ukraine and end the fighting, he said.
The economic pressure Western sanctions are putting on Russia is worse than anything the country has encountered before and will have lasting repercussions, said billionaire Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.
“The crisis will be most severe for a minimum of three years,” he said at an economic conference Thursday, according to reports. “Take the 1998 crisis and multiply it by three.”
Deripaska, who founded the aluminum giant Rusal, added Russia has “never faced such a challenge,” the Washington Post reported.
In 1998, the ruble crashed and Moscow defaulted on its debt, prompting a rescue package from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
But now, Russia faces a hostile global response to its invasion of Ukraine. Western sanctions have shut out Russia’s banks and currency reserves from the rest of the world, while companies rush to exit the country and governments look to seize the assets of elites tied to President Vladimir Putin. And more sanctions are on the way.
The current sanctions form a new Iron Curtain, cutting off Russia from the Western world, said Deripaska, who is worth $2.9 billion in Forbes’ latest tally. To prevent further economic crisis, Russia must end the fighting in Ukraine and agree to a ceasefire, he added.
“The main and first step is achieving peace on a compromise basis,” Deripaska said.
Ukrainian Forces Are Using Their Home-Turf Knowledge to Stymie Russia, Top U.S. General Says
Helene Cooper – March 3, 2022
Ukrainian soldiers in a tank exercise in the Donetsk Oblast of Ukraine, Feb. 17, 2022. (Tyler Hicks/The New York Times)
STUTTGART, Germany — The Ukrainian military is conducting a hugely effective and “mobile” defense, using its innate knowledge of its home turf to stymie Russian forces on multiple fronts, Gen. Mark Milley, the top military adviser to President Joe Biden, said early Thursday.
Although the strategic city of Kherson fell to Russia on Wednesday, officials said that Ukrainian forces were mounting battles up and down the Russian lines with what they described as a resourcefulness and creativity that could trip up Russian troops for weeks or months to come.
Milley, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the tactics employed by Ukrainian troops included using mobile weapons systems to bedevil the Russians wherever they could. Ukraine’s troops, he said, are “fighting with extraordinary skill and courage against Russian forces.”
In standing up to an invading country that dwarfs their own and demonstrating their willingness to die to protect it, “fighting Ukrainian people have become the eyes and ears of the world,” Milley said.
The public comments, made to reporters traveling with him to meet with European officials at NATO, were Milley’s first since President Vladimir Putin of Russia began his brutal efforts to seize Ukraine and topple the democratically elected government of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Milley met with NATO’s secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, in Brussels before traveling to Stuttgart to confer with U.S. European Command.
Stoltenberg said the Ukrainian military, which has been backed in recent days with arms shipments from NATO countries, was “performing better and putting up more resistance than most experts expected, and surely more than Russia expected.”
Here Are the Russian Oligarch Super-yachts That Have Been Seized
Jack Holmes – March 3, 2022
Photo credit: NICOLAS TUCAT – Getty Images
For years, many in the West lamented Russia’s system of kleptocratic oligarchy while Western governments happily welcomed in the oligarchs and their gobs of cash. New York City is home to a flock of “ghost buildings,” where elites from Russia—and beyond—have pied-a-terres that are seldom lit up at night because nobody is ever there. Entire neighborhoods in London were oligarched over the years, along with one of the city’s flagship soccer teams, Chelsea, when Roman Abramovich bought the club in 2003. But that all began to change, slowly, in 2014, as Russia engaged in naked aggression towards Ukraine. And now, with Vladimir Putin’s campaign of violent terror against that country, it’s all begun to come apart.
The headline-grabber in the sweeping sanctions regime imposed on Russia’s elite class is the ritual seizing of the yachts. Rich people of every national origin love a big boat, but one could make the case the Russian bigwigs love a boat most of all. And some of these things are, in addition to a gross exhibition of resource-hoarding, fairly impressive feats of engineering and design. So here’s a list of the oligarch superyachts that have changed hands since Putin truly crossed the line.
CNBC reports many oligarchs have begun moving their yachts to the Maldives and elsewhere in an attempt to shield them from European Union sanctions. We’ll update this if any others see new ownership.
Al Raya, Alisher Usmanov
Photo credit: Anadolu Agency – Getty Images
Formerly known as Dilbar, this thing is reportedly 512 feet long and weighs 15,917 tons, making it the world’s largest motor yacht by weight. Forbestells us it usually hosts a crew of 96 people. It has two helipads, a beauty salon, a gym, and 12 suites, along with the largest swimming pool ever put on a boat at 82 feet. A custom job, it reportedly took German shipbuilder Lürssen 52 months to build. Usmanov paid $600 million for it. Forbes reports that German authorities seized the vessel from a shipyard in Hamburg, where it was undergoing some renovations. Tough luck for Usmanov, an Uzbek-born mining magnate who’s held stakes in telecom companies and Facebook. He’s also got extensive real-estate holdings, and was once a major shareholder in London’s Arsenal Football Club, adversary to fellow oligarch Abramovich’s Chelsea.
Amore Vero, (allegedly) Igor Sechin
Photo credit: NICOLAS TUCAT – Getty Images
Reuters reports French authorities are the captain now of this 280-foot vessel, the name of which translates to “True Love” from Italian. The crew was reportedly preparing a hasty departure from La Ciotat, a town near Marseille in the Cote d’Azur, when French customs officers took over management. This one also has a beauty salon and a gym, and France24 reports it hosts a swimming pool that turns into a helipad. The French say that the yacht is owned by a holding company in which Igor Sechin is a the main shareholder. Sechin has been the CEO of Rosneft, the Russian state oil firm, since 2012, and is one of Putin’s closest friends and advisors.
