Ukraine’s Naftogaz persuaded Norwegian authorities to seize a Russian state-owned vessel at Barentsburg in Svalbard on September 2, the latest move in the company’s yearslong campaign to collect on a Hague arbitration award over Russia’s 2014 takeover of its Crimean assets.
The Nord-Troms and Senja District Court ordered the seizure on August 31, barring the ship from leaving its current berth. Naftogaz says Russia still owes roughly $4.22 billion under the award, with interest and legal costs adding to that total. That’s close to the $5 billion the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague awarded the company in April 2023 for the expropriation of its Crimean assets.
“This is another important step towards restoring justice,” Naftogaz’s acting chief executive, Sergii Fedorenko, said in a statement, and vowed to keep chasing Russian assets abroad until Moscow pays what it owes in full.
A Svalbard police source told the Norwegian paper Aftenposten the arrest was genuine, and public ship-tracking data backed it up, placing the Molchanov at anchor off Barentsburg.
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A branch of Roshydromet, Russia’s state weather service, operates the Professor Molchanov, built in Finland 43 years ago. Researchers from Arkhangelsk’s Northern Arctic Federal University have sailed aboard the ship in past years, and its first trip to Barentsburg came in June 2025.
Naftogaz has used the same 2023 award to go after Russian holdings elsewhere in Europe. A Helsinki court froze Russian real estate and other assets in Finland worth tens of millions of dollars in October 2024, the company’s first publicly known seizure outside Ukraine tied to the ruling. Neither seizure comes close to satisfying the award on its own, and Naftogaz has cast both as partial progress rather than actual payment.
