Vladimir Putin’s second largest yacht has been spotted off the coast of Estonia more than seven months after the start of the Russian offensive in Ukraine. yacht Elegantwhich is about 81 meters, was renamed killer whale (“orca” or “orcas”, in Russian), reports News.ro with reference to Forbes.
Photographs taken on September 25 by TheYachtPhoto.com photographer Carl Groll show that the yacht Graceful now has a new name: Kosatka, which is Russian for killer whale.
The yacht was heading north in the Baltic Sea, west of the island of Saaremaa. The images show the yacht being escorted by an armed vessel of the Russian Coast Guard, possibly to St. Petersburg.
The date when the yacht Graceful changed its name to Kosatka is unknown, and how and when it left Kaliningrad, a Russian territory sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland. The yacht’s transponder had been turned off since at least August 30, according to the vessel tracking service MarineTraffic, while it was still in Kaliningrad.
The killer whale, then named Graceful, left the German port of Hamburg on February 7, 17 days before Russian troops invaded Ukraine. The US Treasury Department imposed sanctions on the yacht Graceful, along with three other yachts allegedly owned by Putin, on June 2.
One more addition: Vladimir Putin’s personal yacht — well, the one we know of — is only 80 meters long, the smallest.
This should explain how he managed to get from Hamburg to Kaliningrad so quickly right before the Russian invasion of Ukraine! pic.twitter.com/7GarYPOj9i
— Scott Bixby (@scottbix) February 27, 2022
Putin would have at least five other yachts
In addition to Kosatka, Vladimir Putin reportedly owns at least five other yachts: Scheherazade ($507 million), which technically belongs to oil and gas billionaire Eduard Khudainatov, but is actually his “Small Share”; Olympia ($22 million); Chaika ($18 million), which means “seagull” in Russian; Shellest ($17 million) and Nega.
An investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) published in June shed light on the shady ties between Putin and his yachts. The companies that own Shellest and Nega are linked to LLCInvest, a network of interconnected companies and nonprofits that owns $4.5 billion in assets, including Putin’s Black Sea palace complex.
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Source: Hot News RO
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