No Mistrals For Putin

Russian vessel Smolnyi leaving St Nazaire to return to Russia - Photo Bernard Grua SAINT-NAZAIRE, France, Dec 18 (NMFP) - A ship carrying the Russian sailors who have been training for months on a French-built Mistral helicopter carrier left the French port of Saint-Nazaire on Thursday, in a departure that seems to exclude the delivery of the Mistral to Russia. A few activists including Bernard Grua saw their ship, the Smolny, leave the Atlantic Ocean port and head out to sea. French media reported this week how many of the 400 sailors and 150 crew members had been stocking up with parcels of purchases at local retailers. The sailors arrived in late June at the shipyard to begin training on a first carrier, named Vladivostock, which France was due to deliver to Russia by the last quarter of 2014. Bon vent! as we say in French (used to express relieve when somebody you don't want to see leaves finally) A few pictures taken by Bernard Grua : Russian vessel S...

Ouest France  posted pictures of the Russian  sailors going back to the Smolnyi with all their belongings. The departure would be for tomorrow Thursday 18th of December around 2pm French time, during the high tide. The sailors are doing a last shopping spree before final departure. The Mistral "Vladivostok", parked for now at the exit of the Louis Joubert dock should move and be located where the Smolnyi is since its arrival on the 6th of June. The information is classified and the French Defence Ministry turns down vehemently any requests to comment on it. According to the French newspaper "Ouest France" , the 400 russian sailors that have been training on the Mistral for the last six month in St Nazaire will leave France before the end of the year. This is a definitive departure and the sailors should be able to spend Christmas with their family. Christmas is celebrated on the 7th of January in Russia according to the Christian Orthodox tradition. They wi...

In another step towards the non delivery of the Mistral, French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian declared today that there is a possiblity that France will never go throught with the delivery of the Mistral-class ships.

Canceling the Mistral deal will have no influence over India buying 126 Rafale aircrafts from France for 12 billion euros and would open doors for 29 billion euros tenders in Poland and Australia. On the other hand, France would have to refund 700 to 800 million euros already paid by Russia and pay a penalty of 251 million euros in case of non delivery. Do the maths... The last financial argument against cancelling the Mistral deal is out! For months now, Russian medias and its French supporter the far right party Front National (who recently received a loan from Russian banks ammounting to 9 million euros) have been spreading fear that India might/would reconsider buying 126 Rafale multirole fighter aircraft as France would appear as an unreliable partner. The main goal of this was of course to try to influence French people and have them on the side of the delivery. India: +12 billion euros The last declarations from Indian Defense spokesman Sitanshu Kar are showing that...

Good news, the russian identification MMSI (273549920) for the Mistral Vladivostok has completely been disabled and doesn't officially exist anymore.  The page where we were  able to see it until today  now returns a 404 error while a  research with the vessel name "Vladivostok"  on the website marinetraffic returns only one result,  the French one! Following last Friday's act of piracy when the russian crew replaced the French MMSI by a russian one while  trying to move all their belongings to the Mistral to take officially possession of it , the Vladivostok  was considered without nationality  as she was under flags of two different countries. According to the article 92 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea: Ships shall sail under the flag of one State only  [...] A ship which sails under the flags of two or more States  [...]  may be assimilated to a ship without nationality Although Romain Nada...

On the 14th of November, the  Mistral Vladivostok appeared as russian on international tracking systems . Following that, the  russian crew was forbidden on board . What really happened? Information is finally  leaking slowly  and allow us to better understand. The incident occurred Monday when the 400 Russian sailors in training since the beginning of the summer in Saint-Nazaire, on the Vladivostok definitely wanted to move on the war ship. The official date of delivery of the Mistral to Russia had been set for November 14, at least until the French government canceled the ceremony of "keys" organized by the manufacturer DCNS. The sailors did as if nothing had changed. Their training was completed for several days, the last sea manoeuvres too. They wanted to transfer their personal belongings from the school boat "Smolny", where they spent every night, to the Vladivostok which is now ready to go to sea. But they were stopped. And if they have been allowed to go...

Suite au  changement inattendu de MMSI (numéro d'immatriculation international maritime) du Mistral Vladivostok survenu le vendredi 14 Novembre , faisant apparaître le navire sous pavillon russe, plusieurs questions se posent: Qui a décidé ce changement et pourquoi? Il est relativement peu clair à l'instant où nous écrivons ces lignes du "qui" a décidé ce changement. DCNS évoque de façon peu convaincante un test demandé par le bureau VERITAS. Sachant que moins d'une heure après que nous ayons publié l'article avertissant de ce changement de MMSI, la balise a cessé d’émettre avec le MMSI russe et est revenue sous MMSI français le jour d’après, tout porte à croire qu'un membre de l'équipage russe se soit chargé de la manœuvre et ait été rabroué suite à notre publication et les interrogations auprès de DCNS qui s'en sont ensuivies. Techniquement parlant, le  numéro MMSI programmé sur une balise ne peut être reprogrammé  sans obtenir un déb...

Ukraine's Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin gives an exclusive interview to Agence France-Presse (AFP) in Brussels, on November 17, 2014 | © AFP | Emmanuel Dunand France is "creative enough" to find a way to avoid delivering Mistral ships to Russia, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin told the AFP. "The opposition from Kiev to the delivery of the two vessels to Russia is crystal clear," said Klimkin in an interview with AFP. "Now it is time to have a clear message to Moscow that further destabilisation in Ukraine will trigger further steps by the EU," Klimkin said as he visited Brussels for talks with new EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini. "Mistral ships should not be delivered to Russia" insists Ukrainian diplomat. Tweet This work is licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License . Source: http://www.gandul.info/international/ucraina-cere-frantei-sa-nu-livreze-rusiei-navele-de-ra...

Submitted by  admin  on Fri, 11/14/2014 - 14:01 Le MMSI (sorte de numéro d'immatriculation pour navires) du Mistral Vladivostok vient tout juste de changer de 227022600 (France) à 273549920 (Russie). Il semblerait que le navire soit officiellement Russe maintenant. Les numéros MMSI sont régulés pour l'international par  l'Union internationale des télécommunications  à Genève, Suisse. Le format et l'utilisation du MMSI sont documentés dans l'article 19 des régulations Radio de l'UIT ainsi que la  recommandation M.585-6  disponible auprés de l'UIT. Nous utilisons  ce lien  pour suivre les mouvements du navire et comme vous pouvez le constater,  le MMSI Français à cessé d'être mis à jour aujourd'hui à 08h24.  Il a été transféré au  nouveau MMSI russe qui, lui, est mis à jour régulièrement . En France, la procédure pour obtenir un MMSI est sévèrement régulée et vous devez avoir  tous les documents nécessaires  pour...

On Otwarty Dialog:  Albo Mistrale dla Rosji, albo antyrakiety dla Polski – demonstracja On Informnapalm:  31.10.2014, Albo Mistrale dla Rosji, albo antyrakiety dla Polski On Gazeta UA:  Поляки збунтувались проти передачі Росії французьких "Містралів" Polish activists demand from Poland's Ministry of Defence to exclude French Eurosam consortium (composed of Thales and MBDA) from pending contracts for supplies to the Polish military, unless France cancels the Mistral deal. The choice should be simple - by delivering Mistrals to Russia France should lose Polish military market! Procurement currently pending is for a contract valued at ca. 6,5 bn euros.  More contracts are planned. Euromaidan Warsaw  and the  Open Dialog Fundation  organised a protest today, the 31st of October, at 2:30pm in front of the Ministry of Defense in Warsaw. Link to the FB event: https://www.facebook.com/events/357261494448128/ Translation of the Polish text: Last week...

Schreenshot from the marinetraffic.com website (15th of Oct). Only the MMSI is left It appears that sometimes, Interfax or other news agencies are delivering important pieces of information that are not relayed by the media, most certainly because nobody understood its importance. Here is one from yesterday.

Screenshot showing the next movements of the Mistral "Vladivostok". The letter "S" stands for the word sortie which means departure in French We announced a bit earlier that there was a  departure without return that was scheduled for the Mistral "Vladivostok" on the 21th of November. (Oct 13-11:00 pm) The date just changed to the 17th of October at 3:45 am, in 4 days!!! Reminder, there has never been any talks of 3d sea trials for the Mistral and no date for the return of the boat can be seen on the  official website !

Manifestation devant le Mistral "Vladivostok" à St-Nazaire, Septembre 2014. Photo Pierre Raimbault L'objectif annuel d'exportations de l'industrie de l'armement française est de 7 milliards d'euros. Si la France décide de livrer les navires de guerre de classe Mistral, les pays directement menacés par cette livraison à Vladimir Poutine réagiront très certainement en n'achetant pas d'armes à la France. Pour la Pologne à elle seule,  la France se couperait ainsi d'un marché de 21 milliards d'euros , 3 ans de l'objectif annuel d'exportations d'armes. Comme le soulignait le journal "Le Monde" récemment , le marché de l'armement français se concentre sur les pays du Moyen-Orient en ce moment. Mais l'invasion ouverte de l'Ukraine par la Russie à porté l'attention de la Lituanie, la Lettonie, l'Estonie, la Pologne et la Roumanie pour n'en citer que quelques uns sur l'urgence de mettre à n...

Lien vers la version Française UPDATE: The sea trials have been postoponed to the 13th of Sept!!! The first Mistral class war ship that France is willing to deliver to Russia is about to go on sea trials on the 10th of September with the Russian military sailors that are being trained in St-Nazaire on board. This is a golden opportunity for France and Russia to circumvent a possible Embargo that might be signed soon. The war ship is supposed to go on sea trials for 9 days in the international waters. This is higly reminiscent of an event that escaped too easily from French memories: the "Boats of Cherbourg". If this sounds like a wink to a famous French movie, the story is far from being as fun as that. In 1965, French sold 12 "Sa'ar 3" class missile boats to the Isreali government. 5 of these boats were delivered before Charles de Gaulle's government impose an Embargo in 1967 following the six-day war.  Two of the boats, at the moment t...

Submitted by  admin  on Thu, 08/14/2014 - 14:59 (English Version) Le fait que la France s'apprête à fournir des navires de guerre de type Mistral à la Russie a fait couler beaucoup d'encre et de salive. On pointe la plupart du temps le manque de moralité des autorités françaises, qui, par peur de pertes d'emplois et de manque à gagner financier, décide contre vents et marées de livrer ces navires au "nouvel Empire Russe" contre l'opinion du monde libre. Nous nous focaliserons ici sur les conséquences financières néfastes du contrat Mistral sur l'industrie de l'armement française. La France défend sa position en clamant que la rupture de ce contrat entraînerait une perte de crédibilité en tant que partenaire commercial, dans un contexte où un contrat avec l'Inde estimé entre 15 et 20 milliards d'euros pour la fourniture de 126 Rafales est en attente d'être signé. Le gouvernement Français manque ici un point important:...