The yacht, on which Putin, according to some sources, was resting in St. Petersburg at the height of the mutiny, left no digital trace
The yacht, on which, according to two Russian journalists, Vladimir Putin could have rested during the Scarlet Sails holiday in St. Petersburg, was not recorded by the MarineTraffic vessel tracking system. The agency was also unable to find blog posts about the luxury boat that appeared in St. Petersburg on June 24th.
Details . Journalist Mikhail Zygar wrote in a New York Times column this weekend that Putin visited St. Petersburg on June 24 and watched the Scarlet Sails holiday from the yacht of his friend, billionaire Yuri Kovalchuk. In a column for Spiegel, the journalist specified that this was Kovalchuk’s new boat.
▪️According to Dozhd journalist Yulia Taratuta, Kovalchuk made an expensive gift to Putin at the holiday – he presented a 100-meter yacht that took 3-5 years to build. The journalist, citing eyewitnesses, specified that usually Putin’s entourage from yachts watches the holiday in front of the Hermitage.
▪️The MarineTraffic tracking system for the movement of ships on the day and night of the Scarlet Sails holiday did not record superyachts on the Neva and in the Vasilyevsky Island area. Judging by the data of the system, only passengers of pleasure boats observed the holiday from the water in the area where it was held.
▪️MarineTraffic fixes vessels thanks to the automatic identification system (AIS), which, according to the requirement of the international convention for the safety of life at sea, must include large vessels, including superyachts.
▪️However, not all vessels strictly follow this rule: it is not uncommon for teams to turn off transponders. Last year, the yachts of Russian oligarchs began to turn off the AIS, The Guardian wrote . In particular, the crews of yachts, whom journalists associate with Oleg Deripaska, Vagit Alekperov, Viktor Rashnikov, Andrey Guryev, Igor Kesaev, Andrey Melnichenko, did this.
▪️However, even with the transponder turned off, it would be difficult for a hundred-meter yacht to go unnoticed in St. Petersburg. Such a boat is more than two times larger than the brig “Russia” (50 meters), which raised the “scarlet sails” at the festival, and only slightly smaller than the cruiser “Aurora” (126.8 meters). However, the Agency was unable to find photo or video evidence of the presence of yachts of this size on the Neva on the day of the holiday on social networks.
Context. At the height of the Prigozhin rebellion, on June 24, two planes of the Rossiya special flight squad, used by Vladimir Putin, took off from Moscow in the direction of St. Petersburg and turned off the transponders over the Tver region. Another plane of the detachment (it is used by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov) flew to St. Petersburg. This allowed journalists to speculate that Putin flew to St. Petersburg during the mutiny. However, presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov denied that Putin went to St. Petersburg and that he would take part in Scarlet Sails there.
▪️The next day, both aircraft used by Putin reappeared on the radar – approximately in the same place where they disappeared. Not far from this place is the Khotilovo military air base in the Tver region, where, in addition to military aircraft, the Rossiya flight detachment is based. And 60 km from the air base is Putin’s residence in Valdai. Perhaps it was here, and not in St. Petersburg, that Putin moved during the rebellion, the Agency wrote.
▪️Independent journalists wrote about Putin’s possible participation in the Scarlet Sails festival in 2022 and 2021. In 2022, the Rotunda, citing sources, reported that Putin could watch Scarlet Sails from the water with Alexander Lukashenko, and in 2021, Novaya Gazeta wrote that the holiday was not transferred to an online format, since Putin I wanted to see it from the center of the water area. The Kremlin did not confirm this information.
