Stuck between sanctions and frozen seas, Russian icebreakers target China

FSUE Rosmorport, a Russian state-owned company overseeing the country’s seaports, announced on July 7 that its four icebreakers had successfully completed their work on the Northern Sea Route. Ten days earlier, the period of icebreaking assistance for vessels concluded, and restrictions on ice navigation were lifted in Port Elga and its approaches, where three Rosmorport icebreakers also operated.

The first bulk carrier with coal bound for China left Elga in late November 2024. Just three weeks later, its approaches were almost completely blocked by solid ice. Monitoring data indicates that the worsening ice conditions caught the port owners off guard.

Despite the declared period of icebreaker assistance starting on Dec. 10, there was still not a single icebreaker in the port, and four bulk carriers remained in the harbor and at anchor – only one of which had ice reinforcement. Two vessels managed to reach clear water independently. The remaining ones did so only with the help of the icebreakers “Kapitan Dranitsyn” and “St. Petersburg,” which arrived in Elga on Jan. 4 and Jan. 6 rspectively.

From January, the port was open only to vessels with ice reinforcement. Mooring operations were handled by ice-class tugs, which had to work through a continuous thick layer of broken and crushed ice, reaching 1.5 meters thick in the harbor. On March 10, the Arctic ice-class tug “Titan,” which had worked on the Northern Sea Route in the previous season, came to Elga’s aid, followed by the icebreaker “Kapitan Khlebnikov” on April 11.

According to monitoring data, coal shipments from Elga were suspended for over two months starting in early April. Alongside the three icebreakers, seven bulk carriers with a total deadweight of almost half a million tons remained on standby: four were in port and at anchorage, and three more were cruising in the Sea of Okhotsk. Shipments only resumed on June 10, shortly before the end of the period of icebreaker assistance.

In total, three Rosmorport icebreakers worked 404 days in Elga. During this time, only about 30 vessels, with a total deadweight of approximately 1.7 million tons, entered and exited the port. The length of icebreaking escorts ranged from 400 to 600 kilometers.

Thus, the first period of icebreaker assistance in Port Elga showed that its operation requires significantly more icebreaker involvement than exports through ports in the southern part of the Far East. Furthermore, to achieve the planned export volumes of tens of millions of tons, Elgaugol will need to find dozens of bulk carriers with at least a minimal ice class in the coming years.

That is a challenging task in the current political situation because companies of the Elga group are included in the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s sanctions list, creating a risk of secondary sanctions for business partners.

Arctida is a non-profit organization that promotes transparency and sustainable development in the Arctic region.Arctida also investigates topics such as climate financing, Arctic management principles, and the rights of indigenous peoples.