As Nato and Russia joined forces in the search for the missing cargo ship Arctic Sea, commentators on Sunday said news the ship's owners had received a ransom demand augured well for the Russian crew. Helsinki-based Solchart Management had received the demand, Finnish police confirmed on Saturday.
Finnish Detective Chief Superintendent Jan Nyholm told AFP the authorities there were keeping more than 20 countries informed of developments concerning the hunt for the ship.
A story on the website of the Financial Times Deutschland reported that the demand was for 1.5 million dollars (1.05 million euros), without citing its source. The did not say whether the ransom was for the crew to be freed or for the ship itself.
But for Russian maritime expert Mikhail Voitenko, the development was good news for the 15-strong Russian crew. "This is the first positive sign that there are intentions to bring back the crew," told AFP on Sunday. Voitenko declined to speculate on who might be behind a ransom demand.
Yulia Latynina, an anti-Kremlin political commentator and a radio host in Moscow, took a similar view. "It appears they are looking for a way out of the situation and it appears to mean that the crew will return safe and sound, thank God - and that's the most important."
For Latynina, the saga of the Arctic Sea's disappearance had all the trappings of a Frederick Forsyth thriller.
The mystery of the vessel - and why somebody has gone to the trouble of hijacking it - is attracting growing international attention.
The Maltese-flagged Arctic Sea left Finland for the Algerian port of Bejaia, carrying a cargo of about 6,700 cubic metres of sawn timber estimated to be worth 1.16 million euros (1.7 million dollars) on July 23.
A day later, eight to 10 masked men boarded the ship between the Swedish islands of Oland and Gotland in the Baltic Sea at about 0100 GMT, Swedish police later reported, several days after the incident. The last definite trace of the ship was in the early hours of July 30, when its tracking system put if off the coast of north-western France.