Vladimir Putin
(Picture: Getty Images; illustration by Grace Moore)The super-yacht Graceful has almost everything a rich bon viveur could need: an indoor swimming pool, six gold-trimmed cabins, teak decking and, of course, a helipad. It is reportedly owned by Vladimir Putin. So it came as a big surprise on 26 February at around 2am UK time, when marine tracking websites showed this 80-metre floating hotel suddenly change its call sign to FCKPTN and crash itself into Snake Island, a rocky dot of land about 20 miles off the Ukrainian coast.
In reality, none of this happened. The yacht was safely berthed at Kaliningrad in Russia the whole time (handily beyond the reach of the international sanctions currently jeopardising wealthy Russians’ trinkets). But online, members of the Anonymous group had manipulated the automated identification system that ships use to log their positions publicly, making the Graceful appear to have gone on a suicide mission.
