European airspace has long been closed to Russian aircraft, and many other countries have joined. For the private jets of the Russian elite, it’s getting pretty cramped “up there”. A Twitter account tracking oligarchs’ flights, only reports takeoffs and landings every few hours. Things are different on the oceans of the world. It’s no secret: The most expensive and largest yachts often belong to Russian billionaires – and the mega-ships are still on the move around the world.
It does not have to stay like this. According to the Handelsblatt, the EU is considering an entry ban for Russian ships. The question arises as to whether this is based on the origin of the owner or on the respective flag under which the yachts sail. Because, as is usual in shipping, this is almost never the home country of the owner, but mostly a Caribbean island, for example the Cayman Islands.
But the ships have one thing in common: the so-called IMO number of the International Maritime Organization. This allows the yachts to be followed very closely, for example on sites such as marine traffic, vessel finder or vessel tracker.
For example, it can be found out that one of the largest mega yachts in the world, the “Dilbar” by Alisher Burkhanovich Usmanov, is currently at Blohm & Voss in Hamburg. Right next to the “Luna” by Farkhad Teimurovich Akhmedov. In other ports around Europe it is apparently also nice: Rashid Sardarov’s “Stella Maris” is in Nice, the largest sailing yacht in the world, Andrei Melnitschenko’s “A” is in Trieste and in Barcelona you can currently see the ” Solaris” by Roman Arkadyevich Abramovich.
+++ Also read: After a stay in Hamburg: Putin’s private yacht “Graceful” takes the fastest course to Kaliningrad +++
Since the huge ships are certainly interesting targets for sanctions, it remains exciting to see whether, for example, the maintenance work in Hamburg will be fatal for the owner of the “Dilbar”. The first curiosities in connection with the yachts have already emerged in the past few days. The “Graceful”, Vladimir Putin’s yacht, was also in the port of Hamburg until a few weeks ago. Virtually at the same time as the attack on Ukraine began, the ship took the fastest route home to Kaliningrad.
Another ship, the Lady Anastasia, believed to belong to Russian arms manufacturer Alexander Mikheev, almost sank. A Ukrainian employee on board tried to flood the yacht in order to take revenge on his boss. Read more about it here.
The Russian super-rich are said to be often very close to the government and the Kremlin. Wikipedia defines an oligarch as follows: “Russian oligarchs are entrepreneurs who started their businesses during Gorbachev’s period of market liberalization. The Russian oligarch is considered a nouveau riche who unscrupulously appropriated state property during the 1990s.”