SVALBARD, Norway—This summer, Russia’s Geographical Society leased an ice-strengthened vessel for an expedition to map Russia’s historic presence on Norway’s Arctic archipelago of Svalbard.
The episode last month in the High North, just 800 miles from the North Pole, was the latest in a globe-spanning effort to pursue Russian assets that accelerated after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine four years ago. Superyachts and private jets of sanctioned Russian oligarchs have been impounded, commercial vessels have been seized, and $300 billion of Russian central-bank assets have been frozen by the European Union. The Professor Molchanov, named for a famed Russian scientist, had become a target, too—this time to punish Moscow for one of the first shots in the continuing conflict: its annexation of Crimea in 2014. It wasn’t until April 2023 that an international arbitration tribunal in The Hague ruled that Gazprom had unlawfully expropriated Naftogaz’s Crimean assets. It set compensation at $4.2 billion plus interest, which at the time of the award pushed the total above $5 billion.
The sun shone and the waters were calm, the passengers on the Professor Molchanov recalled. What they didn’t know was that Norwegian police would board it at its first stop, the Russian-run mining town of Barentsburg , with a court order to seize the ship and its paperwork. The Russians were in no mood to cooperate. Ukraine’s state energy giant NJSC Naftogaz took legal action to secure compensation from Russia’s Gazprom for energy assets it took over when Russia seized the crucial peninsula on the Black Sea. Working with the U.S. law firm Covington & Burling LLP, Naftogaz battled in the courts for nearly a decade with no result. Russia dismissed the case as bogus. It was a major victory for Ukraine. But Russia refused to pay. So began Naftogaz’s secret global search for Russian assets that could be seized to cover its claim, with help from Covington and multiple law firms in other countries.
By this fall, Naftogaz had secured the seizure of $500 million worth of Russian-owned real estate in Finland and Austria, according to a list shared with The Wall Street Journal by Covington. 28. The partner, Herman Steen, is a shipping expert with almost 25 years of experience. 1, his team boarded to conduct a routine border-control procedure. With a large part of Ukraine’s east illegally occupied by Russian forces since 2022, myriad such cases could potentially be taken up in international tribunals on Kyiv’s behalf. Fause allocated his own ship to collect the Russian ship’s 69 passengers and crew and bring them to the Norwegian town of Longyearbyen, from where they flew to northeast Norway and then crossed the border into Russia. Even if Naftogaz is ultimately able to sell the 43-year-old ship, it won’t make much of a dent in reclaiming the more than $5 billion it is owed.
Last month, the Norwegian government introduced new regulations preventing ships bringing supplies to the archipelago from being seized.
Four daily meals included cutlets and mashed potatoes, according to a Russian newspaper reporter on the voyage. “It was a big deal,” Fause said in an interview. When Fause’s team returned the following day to serve a warrant to seize the ship, the Russian captain Sergei Khokhlov was joined by representatives of Arktikugol who refused to hand over the ship’s documents, according to an arrest report shared with the Journal. He suggested a misunderstanding had occurred and asked the officer to withdraw, according to the report and lawyers involved in the case. He then warned that seizing the ship would lead to serious consequences, according to the report and lawyers who retained contact with Fause’s team throughout the seizure. Fause denies this account and said the operation went ahead without a hitch. One resident of the Russian town said the community was shocked by the incident. Benedikte Moltumyr Høgberg, a professor of constitutional law at Oslo University, said Norway is trying to stop its courts from being used in disputes over Russian assets. “It’s a signal,” Høgberg said of the new law. But the company’s CEO, Serhiy Fedorenko, says that isn’t the point. “We will continue to pursue Russian assets around the world until the compensation awarded to us is paid in full,” Fedorenko said.
Some targets were relatively straightforward. The operation also zeroed in on assets in Norway. Svalbard, the Norwegian-held territory in the Arctic, was a particular target. Russia has long maintained a presence on the archipelago, which became sovereign Norwegian territory a century ago but is governed by a treaty that allows almost any country to do business there. The war in Ukraine complicated that arrangement. When Norway joined Western sanctions against Moscow, it stopped issuing visas to most Russians wanting to visit Svalbard. Flying through Oslo or Tromso was no longer an option. The Professor Molchanov, a ship that had been traversing Arctic waters on scientific expeditions for more than four decades, offered a workaround. It also caught the attention of Olga Ivaniv, a Ukrainian lawyer at Oslo-based law firm Wikborg Rein, which has worked on Naftogaz’s case at The Hague. Working out of the firm’s London office, she was browsing online one day when she came across the research vessel. She learned about its regular trips to Barentsburg, often with tourists on board, and found an itinerary for a voyage slated for late August. Wikborg’s lawyers concluded that the ship wasn’t protected by state immunity laws. They had identified their target. The Professor Molchanov set off from Murmansk on Aug. The ship, spanning the width of a soccer pitch, was equipped with two bars, a library and a sauna. Photos of seals decorated the walls of the dining hall. The same day a senior partner at Wikborg put in a call to the office of the Svalbard governor—the top law-enforcement official on the Arctic archipelago. He had already alerted a Norwegian court with jurisdiction over Svalbard that Wikborg would file an urgent request to authorize the ship’s seizure. He now had a message for the Svalbard governor, Lars Fause: prepare to act. The news caught Fause by surprise. He had sought to keep good relations with Barentsburg, visiting the town each month to meet with residents and directors of the Russian state-owned mining company that runs it, Arktikugol. “You can never be sure about what the Russians are thinking or will do next. Fause decided against immediately carrying out the seizure. When the ship docked in Barentsburg on Sept. Ildar Neverov, the head of Arktikugol, was out of town but asked to speak by phone with one of the Norwegian police officers. Arktikugol declined requests to comment for this article through a spokeswoman and barred the Journal from visiting Barentsburg, which is on Norwegian land leased by Russia and subject to private property laws. It was the captain’s birthday, and several crew members and local residents gathered to toast the veteran seafarer. Russia’s Foreign Ministry accused Norway of trying to squeeze Russia out of the Arctic islands it had inhabited for centuries. The governor of Murmansk warned Norway: “Don’t awaken the Russian bear. Lawyers say the seizure of the Professor Molchanov, and the landmark ruling in The Hague, paves the way for owners of other property expropriated by Russia to pursue compensation. But capturing such assets on Svalbard might have just become harder. It doesn’t want to see tensions with Moscow escalate, especially on Svalbard. “Norway is not going to make it impossible for Russia to be in Barentsburg. The Norwegians had other problems to worry about. After seizing the Professor Molchanov, they feared that keeping dozens of Russians stranded in Barentsburg could prompt retaliation from Moscow. By the second week of September, food supplies in the town were running low. Now, the Professor Molchanov is in a watery limbo, rusting in the Barentsburg port as Russia pursues an appeal at The Hague. What matters is that it captured a Russian asset thousands of miles from Ukraine in the frigid far north. That sends a message of its own. Write to Matthew Luxmoore at [email protected]
When it resumed voyages to Svalbard in June last year after a long hiatus, it enabled direct passage from Murmansk in Russia’s High North.
