The icebreakers Admiral Makarov and Kapitan Dranitsyn of the FSUE "Rosmorport" Murmansk branch provide icebreaking assistance to vessels on the Northern Sea Route during autumn-winter navigation period of 2021-2022.

Since the beginning of the year, the two icebreakers have provided icebreaking assistance to 21 vessels. The total length of the icebreakers' route was more than 7,250 nautical miles, of which two-thirds of the route they had to pass in heavy ice conditions with ice more than 1.5 meters thick, strong compression and hummocks.

The icebreaker Admiral Makarov is currently engaged in icebreaker escorting of vessels in the Kara Sea, which navigate between the seaports of Arkhangelsk and Dudinka. It is planned that the icebreaker will provide icebreaking assistance to vessels in this navigation area until the end of May 2022.

In turn, the icebreaker Kapitan Dranitsyn is currently performing icebreaking assistance to the tug of the vessel Inzhener Trubin. The nuclear-powered icebreaker Arktika and the vessel Polar King are also part of the caravan of vessels heading west along the Northern Sea Route. It is expected that the icebreaking of the vessels in the caravan will end in the third decade of February 2022 near Zhelaniya Cape on the North Island of the Novaya Zemlya archipelago or near the Kara Gate connecting the Barents Sea and the Kara Sea, depending on the ice conditions on the route, after which the cargo vessels will sail independently to their destination seaports.

Earlier, in mid-December 2021, the icebreaker Kapitan Dranitsyn together with the nuclear-powered icebreaker Arktika performed a long-distance icebreaking of three vessels from the western ice edge of the Kara Sea to the seaport of Pevek in difficult ice conditions. After the vessels arrived safely at the seaport of Pevek in January 2022, the icebreaker Kapitan Dranitsyn, together with the nuclear-powered icebreaker Arktika, ensured that the two vessels Lev Yashin and Yuri Arshenevsky were removed from the seaport of Pevek and escorted to the Chukchi Sea in difficult ice conditions.

Photos: I.V. Pridannikov