On November 25, 2022, a solemn event was held at the FSUE “Rosmorport” Astrakhan Branch to mark the 45th anniversary of the Kapitan Chechkin icebreaker.

The vessel was built in 1977 for the Ministry of the Navy of the USSR and was originally designed for piloting vessels on the northern rivers of the country.

The icebreaker was operating for a long time as an auxiliary vessel when nuclear icebreakers were piloting vessels along the Northern Sea Route. In 1986, it was relocated to the Caspian Basin, where it is still actively used for piloting vessels along the Volga-Caspian Seaway Canal and in the water area of the Northern Caspian, providing year-round navigation of seaports in this region.

The icebreaker more than once freed vessels from the ice not only on the Lower, but also on the Middle and Upper Volga, acted as a tugboat to remove vessels stuck on shoals, and also participated in the already historic operation to rescue the Grigory Bugrov tanker, wrecked in the Caspian Sea in 2011.

In addition to solving the main tasks, the icebreaker is actively used as a command and staff vessel during various regional or international exercises in the Caspian Sea, gaining fame not only in Russia, but also abroad.

Currently, the Kapitan Chechkin icebreaker, being a part of the icebreaking fleet of the Astrakhan Branch, is fully ready to perform important tasks of escorting convoys of vessels going to the seaports of Astrakhan and Olya, as well as along the Volga-Caspian Seaway Canal during the winter navigation of 2022-2023.