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![russian yacht nord](https://cdn.boatinternational.com/convert/files/2020/09/04211b30-f670-11ea-83cd-934cfb5218a7-Opus-sea-trials-TVO.jpg/r%5Bheight%5D=350/04211b30-f670-11ea-83cd-934cfb5218a7-Opus-sea-trials-TVO.webp)
NORD is a 141.6 m Motor Yacht, built in Germany by Lurssen and delivered in 2021.
Her top speed is 18.0 kn. She can accommodate up to 36 guests in 20 staterooms. She has a gross tonnage of 10154.0 GT and a 19.5 m beam.
She was designed by Nuvolari Lenard , who also designed the interior. Nuvolari Lenard has designed 120 yachts and designed the interior of 108 yachts for yachts above 24 metres.
The naval architecture was developed by Lurssen , who has architected 71 other superyachts in the BOAT Pro database - she is built with a Teak deck, a Steel hull, and Aluminium superstructure.
NORD is in the top 5% by LOA in the world. She is one of 70 motor yachts longer than 100m, and, compared to similarly sized motor yachts, her volume is 3016.92 GT above the average.
NORD is currently sailing under the Russian Federation flag (along with a total of other 41 yachts). She is known to be an active superyacht and has most recently been spotted cruising near Russian Federation. For more information regarding NORD's movements, find out more about BOATPro AIS .
![](http://isilkul.online/777/templates/cheerup/res/banner1.jpg)
Specifications
- Previous Names: OPUS
- Yacht Type: Motor Yacht
- Yacht Subtype: Displacement , Expedition Yacht
- Builder: Lurssen
- Naval Architect: Lurssen
- Exterior Designer: Nuvolari Lenard
- Interior Designer: Nuvolari Lenard
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- Impressions
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The 141.6-metre Nord was designed with one idea in mind: she must cause strong emotions in every observer, not only through her sheer size, but with the design itself. Responsible for her stunning exterior and interior design is the Italian design studio Nuvolari-Lenard, who have given Nord her striking appearance with a bow design never before seen on a yacht. The 2021 delivered yacht Nord has implemented an exhaust after treatment system, which consists of the combination of a silencer with a selective catalytic reduction in the same casing, which can achieve a cleaning rate up to 97 % of nitrogen and additional reduction of acoustic noise – a Lürssen development.
![russian yacht nord](https://cdn.lurssen.com/images/new-build/the-yachts/nord/01.jpg?w=290)
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A Drunken Evening, a Rented Yacht: The Real Story of the Nord Stream Pipeline Sabotage
It was the kind of outlandish scheme that might bubble up in a bar around closing time.
In May of 2022, a handful of senior Ukrainian military officers and businessmen had gathered to toast their country’s remarkable success in halting the Russian invasion. Buoyed by alcohol and patriotic fervor, somebody suggested a radical next step: destroying Nord Stream.
After all, the twin natural-gas pipelines that carried Russian gas to Europe were providing billions to the Kremlin war machine. What better way to make Vladimir Putin pay for his aggression?
Just over four months later, in the small hours of Sept. 26, Scandinavian seismologists picked up signals indicating an underwater earthquake or volcanic eruption hundreds of miles away, near the Danish island of Bornholm. They were caused by three powerful explosions and the largest-ever recorded release of natural gas, equivalent to the annual CO2 emissions of Denmark.
One of the most audacious acts of sabotage in modern history, the operation worsened an energy crisis in Europe—an assault on critical infrastructure that could be considered an act of war under international law. Theories swirled about who was responsible. Was it the CIA? Could Putin himself have set the plan in motion?
Now, for the first time, the outlines of the real story can be told. The Ukrainian operation cost around $300,000, according to people who participated in it. It involved a small rented yacht with a six-member crew, including trained civilian divers. One was a woman, whose presence helped create the illusion they were a group of friends on a pleasure cruise.
“I always laugh when I read media speculation about some huge operation involving secret services, submarines, drones and satellites,” one officer who was involved in the plot said. “The whole thing was born out of a night of heavy boozing and the iron determination of a handful of people who had the guts to risk their lives for their country.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky initially approved the plan, according to one officer who participated and three people familiar with it. But later, when the CIA learned of it and asked the Ukrainian president to pull the plug, he ordered a halt, those people said.
Zelensky’s commander in chief, Valeriy Zaluzhniy, who was leading the effort, nonetheless forged ahead.
The Journal spoke to four senior Ukrainian defense and security officials who either participated in or had direct knowledge of the plot. All of them said the pipelines were a legitimate target in Ukraine’s war of defense against Russia.
Portions of their account were corroborated by a nearly two-year German police investigation into the attack, which has obtained evidence including email, mobile and satellite phones communications, as well as fingerprints and DNA samples from the alleged sabotage team. The Germany inquiry hasn’t directly linked President Zelensky to the clandestine operation.
Gen. Zaluzhniy, now Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, said in a text exchange that he knows nothing of any such operation and that any suggestion to the contrary is a “mere provocation.” Ukraine’s armed forces, he added, weren’t authorized to conduct overseas missions, and he therefore wouldn’t have been involved.
A senior official of the main Ukrainian intelligence service, SBU, denied his government had anything to do with the sabotage, and said that Zelensky in particular “did not approve the implementation of any such actions on the territory of third countries and did not issue relevant orders.”
Putin has publicly blamed the U.S. for the attacks. A senior Russian diplomat in Berlin echoed that claim, and said the German investigation findings were “fairy tales worthy of the Brothers Grimm.”
In June, Germany’s federal prosecutor quietly issued the first arrest warrant in the case for a Ukrainian professional diving instructor for his alleged involvement in the sabotage. The German investigation is now focusing on Zaluzhniy and his aides, people familiar with the probe say, although they have no evidence that could be presented in court.
The findings could upend relations between Kyiv and Berlin, which has provided much of the financing and military equipment to Ukraine, second only to the U.S. Some German political leaders may have been willing to overlook evidence pointing to Ukraine for fear of undermining domestic support for the war effort. But German police are politically independent and their investigation took on a life of its own as they pursued one lead after another.
“An attack of this scale is a sufficient reason to trigger the collective defense clause of NATO, but our critical infrastructure was blown up by a country that we support with massive weapons shipments and billions in cash,” said a senior German official familiar with the probe.
Following the May 2022 pact between the businessmen and the military officers, it was agreed that the former would finance and help execute the project, because the army had no funds and was increasingly relying on foreign financing as it pushed back against the onslaught of its gargantuan neighbor. A sitting general with experience in special operations would oversee the mission, which one participant described as a “public-private partnership.” He would report directly to the head of Ukraine’s armed forces, the four-star Gen. Zaluzhniy.
Within days, Zelensky approved the plan, according to the four people familiar with the plot. All arrangements were made verbally, leaving no paper trail.
But the next month, the Dutch military intelligence agency MIVD learned of the plot and warned the CIA, according to several people familiar with the Dutch report. U.S. officials then promptly informed Germany, according to U.S. and German officials.
The CIA warned Zelensky’s office to stop the operation, U.S. officials said. The Ukrainian president then ordered Zalyzhniy to halt it, according to Ukrainian officers and officials familiar with the conversation as well as Western intelligence officials. But the general ignored the order, and his team modified the original plan, these people said.
The general tasked with commanding the operation enlisted some of Ukraine’s top special-operations officers with experience in orchestrating high-risk clandestine missions against Russia to help coordinate the attack.
One of them was Roman Chervinsky, a decorated colonel who previously served in Ukraine’s main security and intelligence service, the SBU.
Chervinsky is currently on trial in Ukraine for unrelated charges. In July, he was released on bail after over a year in detention. Reached after his release, he declined to comment on the Nord Stream case, saying he wasn’t authorized to speak about it.
In a subsequent broadcast interview, he said that the sabotage had two positive effects for Ukraine: It helped loosen Russia’s grip on the European countries supporting Kyiv, and it left Moscow with only one main avenue for channeling gas to Europe, pipelines traversing Ukraine. Despite the war, Ukraine collects lucrative transit fees for Russian oil and gas estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
Chervinsky and the sabotage team initially studied an older, elaborate plan to blow up the pipeline drafted by Ukrainian intelligence and Western experts after Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014, according to people familiar with the plot.
After dismissing that idea due its cost and complexity, the planners settled on using a small sailing boat and a team of six—a mix of seasoned active duty soldiers and civilians with maritime expertise—to blow up the 700-mile-long pipelines that sat more than 260 feet below the sea’s surface.
In September 2022, the plotters rented a 50-foot leisure yacht called Andromeda in Germany’s Baltic port town of Rostock. The boat was leased with the help of a Polish travel agency that was set up by Ukrainian intelligence as a cover for financial transactions nearly a decade ago, according to Ukrainian officers and people familiar with the German investigation.
One crew member, a military officer on active duty who was fighting in the war, was a seasoned skipper, and four were experienced deep-sea divers, people familiar with the German investigation said. The crew included civilians, one of whom was a woman in her 30s who had trained privately as a diver. She was handpicked for her skills but also to lend more plausibility to the crew’s disguise as friends on holiday, according to one person familiar with the planning.
The skipper took a short leave from his unit, which had been fighting on the front in the southeast of Ukraine, and his commander was kept in the dark, according to two Ukrainians familiar with the plot.
Ukraine has a long history of training top civilian and military divers. A naval base on the Crimean Peninsula in the past trained deep-sea divers for the purposes of sabotage and demining. It also kept combat dolphins trained to attack enemy divers and blow up ships, according to two senior Ukrainian officers. The base was taken over by Russia after it occupied Crimea, and some of its staff moved elsewhere in Ukraine.
Armed only with diving equipment, satellite navigation, a portable sonar and open-source maps of the seabed charting the position of the pipelines, the crew set out. The four divers worked in pairs, according to people familiar with the German investigation. Operating in pitch-dark, icy waters, they handled a powerful explosive known as HMX that was wired to timer-controlled detonators. A small amount of the light explosive would be sufficient to rip open the high-pressure pipes.
Spending 20 minutes at that depth requires around three hours of decompression, and the person must then refrain from diving for at least 24 hours or risk serious injury.
Inclement weather forced the crew to make an unplanned stop in the Swedish port of Sandhamn. One diver accidentally dropped an explosive device to the bottom of the sea. The crew briefly discussed whether to abort the operation due to the bad weather but the storm soon subsided, two people familiar with the operation said.
Witnesses on other yachts moored in Sandhamn noted that the Andromeda was the only boat with a small Ukrainian flag hoisted on its mast.
In the wake of the attack, which took out three of the four conduits forming the pipelines, energy prices surged. Germany and other nations scrambled to nationalize energy companies that handled Russian gas but collapsed after the pipelines were destroyed. Even today Germany is paying around $1 million a day alone to lease floating terminals for liquefied natural gas or LNG, which only partly replaced the Russian gas flows channeled by Nord Stream.
Germany, Denmark, Sweden and the U.S., among others, sent out warships, divers, underwater drones and aircraft to investigate the area around the gas leaks.
Zelensky took Zaluzhniy to task, but the general shrugged off his criticism, according to three people familiar with the exchange. Zaluzhniy told Zelensky that the sabotage team, once dispatched, went incommunicado and couldn’t be called off because any contact with them could compromise the operation.
“He was told it’s like a torpedo—once you fire it at the enemy, you can’t pull it back again, it just keeps going until it goes ‘boom,’ ” a senior officer familiar with the conversation said.
Days after the attack, in October 2022, Germany’s foreign secret service received a second tipoff about the Ukrainian plot from the CIA, which again passed on a report by the Dutch military intelligence agency MIVD. It offered a detailed account of the attack, including the type of boat used and the possible route taken by the crew, according to German and Dutch officials.
The Netherlands built deep intelligence-gathering capacity in Ukraine and Russia after Russian-backed paramilitaries downed a Malaysia Airlines flight originating from Amsterdam over eastern Ukraine, two Dutch officials said.
Due to rules governing the sharing of classified intelligence, German police investigating the case weren’t allowed to see the Dutch report that linked Zaluzhniy and the Ukrainian military to the attack, but they were made aware of it by intelligence officials.
German investigators questioned dozens of potential witnesses, scanned the bottom of the sea around the blasts and sifted through masses of data including digital communication, travel records and financial transactions.
They had one lucky break. In rushing to leave Germany, the sabotage crew neglected to wash the Andromeda, allowing German detectives to find traces of explosives, fingerprints and DNA samples of the crew.
Investigators later identified their mobile phone numbers and their Iridium satellite phone. That data allowed them to reconstruct the entire journey of the boat, which moored in Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Poland. U.S. authorities sought a court order to obtain from Google the emails a Ukrainian businessman used to lease the boat, and handed them over to the Germans. That Ukrainian businessman had contacted a number of boat rental firms in Sweden as well as in Germany, starting from mid-May 2022.
Investigators then analyzed all mobile phone traffic in the areas where the boat was located, trawling through thousands of connections to distill the relevant data.
At one point they were startled to find out that thousands of German mobile phones were active in the tiny Swedish port of Sandhamn, which was nearly empty at the time the boat was sheltering there from a storm.
It later emerged that a vast cruise ship belonging to a tourist operator passed by and the phones of German passengers briefly linked up with the local cellular mast.
They struggled at one point to secure the cooperation of Polish authorities despite the fact that the saboteurs used Poland partly as a logistical base and stopped in the Polish port of Kolobrzeg.
A port official suspicious of the yacht’s crew alerted police. Poland’s border guard checked the identification of the crew, who produced passports from European Union members. They were allowed to continue sailing north, where they laid the rest of the mines, people familiar with the investigation say.
The entire port was covered by extensive video surveillance, they found. However, despite a history of close cooperation between Warsaw and Berlin in police matters, Polish officials initially refused to hand over the CCTV footage of the port. This year, they told their German colleagues that the footage had been routinely destroyed shortly after the Andromeda departed.
The Polish internal security agency ABW told the Journal that no such footage exists.
By November 2022, German investigators believed Ukrainians were behind the explosion.
Earlier this year, Zelensky ousted Zaluzhniy from his military post, saying a shakeup was needed to reboot the war effort. Zaluzhniy, who has been viewed domestically as a potential political rival, was later appointed Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.K., a position that grants him immunity from prosecution.
In June, German officials issued a confidential arrest warrant for a Ukrainian citizen who the Germans believe was one of the crew members. According to people familiar with the investigation, a van driving the Ukrainian sabotage team from Poland into Germany in 2022 was snapped by a German speed camera, and the man, a diving instructor living with his family near Warsaw, was in the photo.
Authorities in Poland didn’t act on the warrant. The instructor is believed to have since returned to Ukraine. Poland’s failure to arrest him is a major blow to the German probe, because he and other suspects have now been tipped off and will avoid travelling outside Ukraine, people familiar with the investigation said. Ukraine doesn’t extradite its own citizens.
Ukrainian officials who participated in or are familiar with the plot believe it would be impossible to put any of the commanding officers on trial, because no evidence exists beyond conversations among top officials who were, at least initially, all in agreement about wanting to blow up the pipelines.
“None of them will testify, lest they incriminate themselves,” one former officer said.
Drew Hinshaw contributed to this article.
Write to Bojan Pancevski at [email protected]
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A Russian Oligarch’s $500 Million Megayacht Has Avoided Seizure for Months. It Was Just Spotted in the Maldives.
The vessel stopped transmitting its location en route to cape town. now it's in the indian ocean., dana givens, dana givens's most recent stories.
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![russian yacht nord The Nord superyacht in Hong Kong, China, on Friday, Oct. 14, 2022. The Nord, a $500 million megayacht that's connected to sanctioned Russian tycoon Alexey Mordashov, has mysteriously ended up in Hong Kong after a more than week-long voyage from the port of Vladivostok where it was anchored since March. Photographer: Lam Yik/Bloomberg via Getty Image](https://robbreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/AS_gettyimages-1243952467-594x594-1.jpg?w=1000)
Nord might just be the most elusive superyacht on the high seas.
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Mordashov—the largest shareholder in the steelmaker Severstal and the third-richest man in Russia —has been sanctioned by the European Union, the United Kingdom and the United States in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The oligarch maintains he has had no involvement in Russian politics and has been fighting the sanctions since May.
However, like other sanctioned Russians, his assets continue to be seized by Western governments. In fact, Mordashov lost his 215-foot superyacht , Lady M , back in March after it was confiscated by Italian police. In response, billionaires have started relocating their high-priced ships to safer waters.
South Africa initially seemed like a good option. President Cyril Ramaphosa previously said “South Africa has no legal obligation to abide by sanctions imposed by the US and EU.” However, the mayor of Cape Town opposed welcoming Nord , adding there may be protests from the port city’s large Ukrainian community.
The Maldives do not currently have extradition treaties with the US. However, the country is a member of the United Nations, which has vehemently denounced Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Let’s see if Nord ends up dropping anchor.
Dana Givens is a former digital staff writer for Robb Report. Before joining the team, she was a seasoned freelancer covering travel and lifestyle topics for outlets such as Business Insider, Fodor's…
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How did divers manage to blow up the Nord Stream pipeline? We went down to the spot to find out
German network ard chartered yacht and divers to see how sabotage occurred.
![russian yacht nord](https://i.cbc.ca/1.6899030.1688667466!/fileImage/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/square_140/cbc-logo.jpg)
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It was an event that rocked Europe and shook world affairs.
Early in the morning on Sept. 26, 2022, a series of powerful undersea explosions damaged pipelines under the Baltic Sea near Denmark that carried Russian natural gas to Germany.
Fingers were immediately pointed at Ukraine, which had been at war with Russia since the latter invaded in February of that year. Ukraine denied involvement, and in the absence of reliable information, conspiracy theories proliferated about who attacked the Nord Stream pipeline.
Did a Russian submarine intentionally destroy it in order to cut off the gas supply to Germany, a country allied with Ukraine? Was it the CIA, as famed U.S. investigative journalist Seymour Hersh wrote?
The German government has been tightlipped about the affair for two years, but this week, German media outlets ARD, Sueddeutsche Zeitung and Die Zeit jointly reported that federal prosecutors obtained an arrest warrant against a Ukrainian man. A Polish government spokesperson confirmed it.
The German reports identified the man as Volodymyr Z., a diving instructor who last resided in Poland. In a brief telephone conversation on Tuesday with reporters from ARD, Sueddeutsche Zeitung and Die Zeit, Volodymyr Z. expressed surprise at the accusations and denied involvement.
![russian yacht nord A large body of water is shown, with clouds shown above a large surface bubbling.](https://i.cbc.ca/1.7125520.1708952008!/fileImage/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/original_780/denmark-pipelines.jpg)
A report this week by the Wall Street Journal also pointed to Ukraine, suggesting the operation was carried out by Ukrainian soldiers and civilians with diving expertise and under the direction of Ukraine's then-commander-in-chief, Valerii Zaluzhnyi.
Journalists at ARD, Germany's public broadcaster, have been hot on the trail since the shocking explosions took place. I was one of the reporters who was part of the team that spent months piecing together what may have occurred.
To understand what happened to the Nord Stream pipeline that day, ARD chartered the very yacht the perpetrators allegedly used and sent divers into the roiling waters of the Baltic Sea to see how the pipeline might have been attacked.
Group chartered sailing yacht
Several outlets have reported that in early September 2022, a sailing yacht called Andromeda set sail from the port of Hohe Düne in Rostock, Germany. According to the ARD investigation, the commando that was to destroy the pipelines was on board the Andromeda. The group is said to have consisted of six people — five men and one woman. Among them, it is suspected, was Volodymyr Z.
After stops in Rügen, Bornholm and Christiansø in Denmark, Sandhamn in Sweden and Kołobrzeg in Poland, the boat returned to Rostock.
![russian yacht nord A yacht docked.](https://i.cbc.ca/1.7296606.1723825869!/fileImage/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/original_780/andromeda-yacht.jpg)
At some point during the trip, investigators believe the crew dove from the yacht down to the seabed and, in the darkness of the Baltic Sea, attached the explosive devices to the pipeline at a depth of around 80 metres.
What happened later is well-known. At 2:03 a.m. local time on Sept. 26, 2022, the first explosion damaged Nord Stream 2. Approximately 16 hours later, three other explosions damaged Nord Stream 1. Investigators later found residue of the explosive HMX, also known as octogen, on board the Andromeda.
- Germany issued arrest warrant for Ukrainian diver in Nord Stream pipeline attack
- Denmark, like Sweden before them, ends probe into Nord Stream pipeline 'sabotage'
During our investigation, we wondered just how hard it would have been to carry out such a mission.
The Andromeda is a charter yacht. Anyone can rent it — so we rented it, too, and took three divers with us.
As with many charter yachts, the Andromeda was not in the best condition — our skipper called it "one of the worst boats I've ever sailed with."
He said several electrical components were broken and that the yacht didn't move well in the waves. Then there was the swim platform, which the divers would need to get on and off the boat. If the swell is high, the platform moves up and down, punching into the sea. A diver trying to get back on the boat could be slammed on the head by the platform, causing serious injury. For us, this risk was too high.
![russian yacht nord A woman in sunglasses sits on a boat.](https://i.cbc.ca/1.7296996.1723836991!/fileImage/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/original_780/lea-struckmeier-in-a-boat.jpg)
So we returned the Andromeda and chartered a professional diving vessel with a crew that usually recovers Second World War explosives from the bed of the Baltic Sea.
We then drove to the exact spot where the first explosion happened — 120 kilometres off the German coast, with the Danish island Bornholm in sight.
Trained divers required
We arrived at 6 a.m. to witness a symbolic moment in the Baltic Sea.
A Russian military ship appeared. Through our radio, we heard, "Russian warship delta echo, U.S. warship Yankee." The U.S. Navy was trying to make contact with the Russian Navy right before our eyes. How could a sabotage operation have gone on undetected in this environment?
The burst pipeline lay almost 80 metres beneath us, a depth not every diver could handle.
You need to be trained as a tech diver. At that depth, you have to breathe a special mixture of oxygen, helium and nitrogen, and that means carrying about 220 pounds of equipment.
![russian yacht nord A diver underwater.](https://i.cbc.ca/1.7296616.1723826304!/fileImage/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/original_780/diver.jpg)
It is also pitch black at the bottom of the sea. The multiple scuba tanks gave the divers about 40 minutes to find the pipeline, which means they needed to know precisely where to look. A sonar device was required to locate the pipeline beforehand. The Andromeda did not have this kind of device on board, but our new vessel did.
Our tech divers found the burst pipeline on their second try and filmed it.
The difficult part for the divers was returning to the surface. The pressure is so intense that if the ascent is not done correctly, divers could experience serious symptoms like paralysis or damage to their lungs. Doing proper decompression from such a depth — which requires divers to switch to a different gas mix — takes about two hours.
Conducting a complex mission like that from the Andromeda would have been difficult and dangerous. According to the German investigation, it's plausible Volodymyr Z. was trained for dives like that.
![russian yacht nord A broken gas pipe deep underwater.](https://i.cbc.ca/1.7296622.1723826320!/fileImage/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/original_780/nord-stream-pipe-damage.jpg)
Everyone who has examined the Andromeda agrees it's not the vessel anyone would choose to secure a mission.
As our tech diver Derk Remmers put it: "I would use the Andromeda for a vacation, but not a sabotage mission."
Yet this could be precisely why the saboteurs used it. To stay undetected and unaccountable — which they managed to do until the charges were made public this week.
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Lea Struckmeier is an investigative journalist and presenter at ARD, Germany's public broadcaster. She is currently spending her Arthur F. Burns Fellowship with CBC.
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Polish authorities have this week acknowledged they failed to arrest a Ukrainian man wanted by Germany on suspicion of blowing up the Nord Stream gas pipelines in September 2022.
The explosions were for a long time a mystery, with Russia and the west blaming each other for the incident, which occurred a few months after Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine .
But the details of the German investigation go some way to explaining who might have been behind one of the most spectacular cases of sabotage in recent European history.
![russian yacht nord Nord-stream-leaks-map](https://www.ft.com/__origami/service/image/v2/images/raw/https%3A%2F%2Fd6c748xw2pzm8.cloudfront.net%2Fprod%2F34294d60-5a45-11ef-9e99-b7f12e87ea5f-standard.png?source=next-article&fit=scale-down&quality=highest&width=700&dpr=1)
What happened in the Nord Stream attacks?
Both Nord Stream 1 and 2 connected Germany directly to Russia via the Baltic Sea, circumventing Poland and Ukraine. The parallel pipelines were ruptured by a series of explosions that occurred on September 26 2022 near the Danish island of Bornholm.
The blasts caused leaks on three of the four Nord Stream pipelines that were so powerful that they were picked up by seismic monitors in Sweden, and led to huge patches of gas bubbles forming on the surface of the Baltic Sea.
The incident immediately triggered a complex blame game, with Russia, the US and Ukraine all named as possible culprits.
![russian yacht nord A satellite photograph of the Nord Stream 2 leak close to the Danish island of Bornholm](https://www.ft.com/__origami/service/image/v2/images/raw/https%3A%2F%2Fd1e00ek4ebabms.cloudfront.net%2Fproduction%2F37192936-4b68-43e9-be2d-e253bc6d5cd4.png?source=next-article&fit=scale-down&quality=highest&width=700&dpr=1)
What did investigators find out?
There were competing theories about who was responsible for the attacks.
The investigations in Sweden and Denmark are believed to have focused on the suspicious movements of Russian military vessels in the area ahead of the explosions. Yet in the end the Swedes and Danes dropped their case, saying they lacked sufficient evidence to charge anyone.
But for the German authorities, all evidence pointed to Ukraine. The CIA had warned in the summer of 2022 that a group of Ukrainian saboteurs was planning to blow up the pipelines, using a rented sailboat and divers.
In the months following the blasts, investigators made a breakthrough. They came across a 15m-long yacht, the Andromeda, in north-east Germany which had been chartered around the time of the explosions.
Witnesses had seen five men and a woman aboard the vessel. When officials searched it they found traces of the explosive octogen, which can be used underwater.
When did authorities act?
This June, German authorities issued an arrest warrant for a 44-year-old Ukrainian national living in Poland. He was named as Volodymyr Z by Polish authorities, but Swedish newspaper Expressen has fully identified him as Volodymyr Zhuravlov, a diving instructor living in the Polish town Pruszków.
He was suspected of “anti-constitutional sabotage and causing an explosion”.
The man worked for a diving school run by a couple from Kyiv who are also suspected by German investigators of involvement in the explosions.
What gave Zhuravlov away?
According to a joint investigation by German media, including the public broadcaster ARD, a key clue was provided by the driver of a white van that had been caught in a radar speed trap on the island of Rügen, off the northeastern coast of Germany.
The van was allegedly used to transport diving equipment later deployed in the subsea attack.
Its driver identified Zhuravlov as one of the passengers. He is believed to be the person sitting next to the driver in the speed camera photo.
Why wasn’t he arrested immediately?
Germany sent its European arrest warrant against Zhuravlov to the Polish authorities in June — but they didn’t detain him.
Instead he was able to cross the border from Poland into Ukraine at the start of July, according to a spokesperson for the Polish prosecutor’s office. She said he had not been listed as a “wanted person” in the relevant database.
But media reports said Warsaw has shown little interest in bringing the culprits to justice and had questioned leads provided by German police pointing to Ukraine. Poland, as well as the Baltic states, had been vocally opposed to the Nord Stream project, which was seen as a Kremlin plot to deepen Europe’s dependence on Russian gas.
Has Russian gas kept flowing to Europe since the sabotage?
Before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, it accounted for 46 per cent of gas imports into the EU.
That fell to 16 per cent last year, as EU governments — with the exception of Hungary, Austria and Slovakia — scrambled to wean themselves off Russian gas and find alternative suppliers.
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While Russian pipeline imports dropped, the EU continued to import liquefied natural gas from Russia, though the US is now the main LNG supplier to the continent.
In May, Russian-piped gas and LNG shipments accounted for 15 per cent of total supply to the EU, UK, Switzerland, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and North Macedonia, according to data from ICIS.
Additional reporting by Richard Milne
Data visualisation by Cleve Jones
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Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne, additional reporting by Rachel More in Berlin and Vladimir Soldatkin in Moscow; Editing by Himani Sarkar, Michael Perry, Mark Heinrich and Alex Richardson
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Russia’s richest man, Alexei Mordashov, has secretly moved his gigantic 465-foot megayacht, Nord, to Abu Dhabi. Will this $500 million ‘Houdini of the high seas’ now make the UAE its new home?
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The Nord yacht is a 465ft motor yacht built by Lurssen. Designed by Nuvolari Lenard, its interior is a masterpiece of luxury and style. The owner of the yacht Nord is Russian billionaire Alexei Mordashov. With a top speed of 20 knots and a range of features including a helicopter hangar, swimming pool, and cinema, it offers an unparalleled ...
The 142 m (466 ft) superyacht Nord was launched by Lürssen at their yard near Bremen-Vegesack.Both the yacht's exterior and interior design are the work of Nuvolari & Lenard. [3] Nord, formerly known as Project OPUS, was built under the supervision of yacht brokerage Moran Yacht & Ship based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. [6] The ship belongs to billionaire Alexey Mordashov and is estimated to ...
Nord is a name taken in the same breath as Solaris, Eclipse, Dilbar, and Azzam, the absolute best superyachts in the world. For a change, this article is not about Nord's transponders, refuel costs, or Mordashov's massive empire.After extensively discussing the $500 million luxury vessel, its 464-foot length, swimming pool, sun terrace, spa, diving center, and tender garage, we will show ...
Peter Parks/AFP via Getty Images. After avoiding seizure for more than a year, the elusive Russian megayacht Nord is finally heading back to its home country. The $500 million vessel, owned by ...
A superyacht named the Nord and linked to a sanctioned Russian oligarch has dropped anchor in Hong Kong, amid efforts by the West to seize the luxury assets of Russian elites in allied ports as ...
The $500 million superyacht "Nord," which is said to belong to the Russian oligarch Alexey Mordashov, was spotted in Hong Kong after being docked in Russia for months.
Item 1 of 3 The 465-foot superyacht "Nord", reportedly owned by sanctioned Russian oligarch Alexei Mordashov is seen in Hong Kong, China, October 20, 2022.
Russian Mogul's Yacht Heads to Homeland After Transoceanic Trip. The Nord superyacht in Hong Kong in 2022. ... Nord changed its destination to Vladivostok on June 25, according to shipping data ...
NORD is a 141.6 m Motor Yacht, built in Germany by Lurssen and delivered in 2021. Her top speed is 18.0 kn. She can accommodate up to 36 guests in 20 staterooms. She has a gross tonnage of 10154.0 GT and a 19.5 m beam. ... NORD is currently sailing under the Russian Federation flag (along with a total of other 41 yachts). She is known to be an ...
Nord. The 141.6-metre Nord was designed with one idea in mind: she must cause strong emotions in every observer, not only through her sheer size, but with the design itself. Responsible for her stunning exterior and interior design is the Italian design studio Nuvolari-Lenard, who have given Nord her striking appearance with a bow design never ...
The yacht costs $50 million to run but it remains out of reach of Western countries while in Russian waters. Another Mordashov yacht worth $71 million and property worth $116 million was seized in ...
Even today Germany is paying around $1 million a day alone to lease floating terminals for liquefied natural gas or LNG, which only partly replaced the Russian gas flows channeled by Nord Stream.
November 8, 2022 at 10:19 PM PST. This article is for subscribers only. Russian tycoon Alexey Mordashov 's $500 million superyacht is due to arrive in Cape Town after sailing more than 7,000 ...
The new megayacht NORD, a 142m long yacht reportedly built for a Russian billionaire, returned from sea trials to the Lürssen yard Bremen, Germany, on Nov. 9...
Motors. Marine. November 15, 2022. A Russian Oligarch's $500 Million Megayacht Has Avoided Seizure for Months. It Was Just Spotted in the Maldives. The vessel stopped transmitting its location ...
Russian oligarchs have a deep love for superyachts, and it is more profound than the oceans they take them on. Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich splurged on a $610M megayacht Solaris comprising 48 cabins. ... Via Instagram / @today.yacht The beauty that is the Nord yacht: German shipyard Lürssen handed this 464-foot behemoth to its owner ...
Is the Nord yacht emulating the elegant Amadea? Not literally, but figuratively. While Amadea is going back and forth only in court proceedings, Russia's richest man Alexei Mordashov is moving his mammoth $500 million megayacht, Nord, back and forth from the Russian port Vladivostok.
Whether the $500m, 142m, ultraluxury Nord will still head to Cape Town after the Maldives, an archipelagic state in the Indian Ocean just south of India, is not clear. Russian superyacht Nord may ...
To understand how the Nord Stream pipeline attack in September 2022 might have occurred, German public broadcaster ARD chartered the very yacht the perpetrators allegedly used and sent divers into ...
They came across a 15m-long yacht, the Andromeda, in north-east Germany which had been chartered around the time of the explosions. Witnesses had seen five men and a woman aboard the vessel.
The explosions left gas billowing from Nord Stream 1 and 2 - two major conduits that transported Russian gas to Europe - and prompted a huge operation to find who was responsible.
Item 1 of 2 Gas bubbles from the Nord Stream 2 leak reaching surface of the Baltic Sea in the area shows disturbance of well over one kilometre diameter near Bornholm, Denmark, September 27, 2022.
The Nord is currently docked in Zayed port Abu Dhabi. Via Facebook / @Superyachtfan Even if the Nord Yacht moves to UAE, it will be in the company of several other lavish floating mansions like the $100 million superyacht Titan, the $156 million Madame Gu, Andrey Melnichenko's $300 million motor yacht A, and more.The 465-foot megayacht Nord is owned by Mordashov, worth $19.8 billion, and is ...
My question is more relating to the greater area of Tomsk, in the northern region, near the river Ob. I am wondering about a town on the map 'Talinovka'. I was researching some gulags in this region, I think near Narym, where Estonians...
Answer 1 of 4: Hello, we have a 4x4 expedition through Russia, and were wondering if we can get from Niznevartovsk to Tomsk by car, along the Obi river. On the map there are no roads, just swamp, and we don't want to go round. Thank you!!!!
German state prosecutors trying to solve the mystery of who blew up the Nord Stream gas pipelines under the Baltic Sea in 2022 have issued an arrest warrant for a Ukrainian diving instructor ...
Population: 42,219 (2010 Russian census); [2] 43,815 (2002 Census); [6] 43,348 (1989 Soviet census). [7] History. It was founded in 1966 as a settlement near the village of Strezhevoy and was granted town status in 1978. [citation needed] Administrative and municipal status
Kargasok. Kargasok ( Russian: Каргасок) is a rural locality (a selo) and the administrative center of Kargasoksky District of Tomsk Oblast, Russia, located on the left bank of the Ob River, 460 kilometers (290 mi) from Tomsk, the administrative center of the oblast. Population: 8,127 ( 2010 Russian census); [1] 8,547 ( 2002 Census); [2 ...