When the son of one of Vladimir Putin’s former close allies sought to travel through the Northwest Passage to Alaska, the Canada Border Services Agency instead demanded he sail 1,000 nautical miles off course in an attempt to get permission for the voyage. The 26-metre yacht Firebird is owned by Andrey Yakunin, the son of Vladimir Yakunin, who was a loyal Kremlin ally and president of the Russian Railways until his son applied for British citizenship a decade ago. The younger Yakunin, who now lives in Italy, attempted to make his journey at a time when tensions have risen between Canada and Russia over the invasion of Ukraine and tit-for-tat sanctions put in place by both countries.
“We wanted to do an attempt of crossing the Northwest Passage from Atlantic to the Pacific, and as far as we understood the existing rules and regs, we needed to apply for remote clearance, which we did, and we were not able to obtain one,” Andrey Yakunin said early Tuesday in an interview from his home in Italy. The trip, which journeys through the waters of Canada’s Arctic, is a draw for high-latitude sailors. “For anybody who is doing high lats, the Northwest Passage is one of the final attempts you can do,” Yakunin said.
“It’s the remoteness, the challenges, the necessity to navigate through the quickly changing ice conditions.” On July 5, 2023, Firebird skipper Peter Madej made a remote clearance application to the Canadian government for the ship’s passage. The luxury sai.
