prokhorov yacht

Biden And Allies Are Coming For Russian Billionaires’ Yachts: Forbes Tracked Down 63. Here’s Where To Find Them

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Most of the yachts are registered through offshore vehicles and docked in far-flung locales.

Updated with new sanctions on September 14, 2023. The locations in this article were last updated on January 9, 2023 and the map has not been updated since this story was originally published in March 2022.

R ussian billionaires have been in the spotlight since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine on February 24. In his State of the Union address on March 1, President Joe Biden said his administration would work with European countries to target Russian oligarchs by seizing “their yachts, their luxury apartments, their private jets.”

The United Kingdom and the European Union imposed sanctions on three more Russian billionaires on March 9 and the U.K. sanctioned Roman Abramovich the next day; more sanctions were announced on March 15 and on March 24; new actions have since brought the total number of sanctioned Russian-born billionaires to 50. Several yachts owned by sanctioned billionaires or their family members and associates—Roman Abramovich, Farkhad Akhmedov, Vagit Alekperov, Andrei Guriev, Eduard Khudainatov, Andrei Kuzmichev, Igor Makarov, Andrey Melnichenko, Alexey Mordashov, Dmitry Pumpyansky, Arkady Rotenberg, Gennady Timchenko, Eugene Shvidler, Alisher Usmanov and Viktor Vekselberg—were last tracked in the U.S., EU or in the U.K. and their territories after the individuals were sanctioned, including France, Germany, Gibraltar, Italy, the Netherlands, Puerto Rico and Spain.

Their personal assets in the European Union, from private jets and superyachts to luxury real estate, may now be frozen. Italian authorities froze Mordashov’s Lady M yacht and Timchenko’s Lena yacht on March 4. On March 12, Italian police froze Melnichenko’s Sailing Yacht A in Trieste. On March 21, authorities in the British overseas territory of Gibraltar detained Dmitry Pumpyansky’s Axioma yacht, the same day French authorities froze a yacht owned by Alezei Kuzmichev. On April 4, Spain’s Guardia Civil and the FBI seized Vekselberg’s Tango yacht in Palma de Mallorca . On April 13, German authorities froze Dilbar , a yacht that was owned by Alisher Usmanov until he transferred ownership to his sister Gulbakhor Ismailova in 2020. On May 5, Fiji seized Suleiman Kerimov’s yacht Amadea at the request of U.S. authorities.

It’s still unclear whether the EU, the U.S. or the U.K. will declare additional sanctions on other individuals. As recently as February 28, Forbes tracked the wealth of more than 100 Russian billionaires. Using data from yacht valuation experts VesselsValue, Forbes has compiled a list of every yacht owned by Russian-born billionaires and recent dropoffs—both those that have been sanctioned and those that have not. At least 12 Russian billionaires fell out of the three-comma-club on March 1.

According to VesselsValue’s head of superyachts, Sam Tucker, yacht “ownership is notoriously private.” The firm has 90% confidence in its data on these yachts, which are generally owned through offshore companies registered everywhere from the Isle of Man to the Cayman Islands. Collectively, the 63 yachts are worth at least $6.3 billion. The 53 yachts owned by sanctioned Russian billionaires are worth at least $4.7 billion.

“Technically speaking, these yachts are owned by a special purpose vehicle, often being in a different jurisdiction to the beneficial owner,” Tucker said. “There are also lease systems, which further distance the [owner] from the asset.” Lease systems are legal structures commonly used to purchase yachts, allowing individuals to own a yacht through a separate company—often registered in places such as Malta and Cyprus—that then leases the yacht to the individual.

While the Russian economy crashes under the weight of sanctions, yachts owned by the country’s billionaires have anchored in much sunnier climes: everywhere from Monaco and Barcelona to Dubai and the Seychelles.

Here is a list of all of the yachts owned by Russian billionaires and billionaires born in Russia tracked by Forbes and VesselsValue (Location data from VesselsValue, MarineTraffic and VesselFinder):

Alexander Abramov

Sanctioned by australia, u.k., yacht name: titan, length: 257 feet, last recorded location: dubai, united arab emirates on january 9, 2023, registered in: bermuda, value: $82 million.

Alexander Abramov's Titan yacht.

Roman Abramovich

Sanctioned by u.k., eu, canada, australia, switzerland, yacht name: eclipse*, length: 533 feet, last recorded location: bodrum, turkey on january 9, 2023, value: $438 million.

*Abramovich also owns eight small vessels “used to support the operations” of Eclipse, named Eclipse 1 through Eclipse 8.

Yacht name: Solaris

Length: 458 feet, last recorded location: marmaris, turkey on january 9, 2023, value: $474 million, yacht name: halo, length: 180 feet, last recorded location: göcek, turkey on december 16, 2022, registered in: cook islands, value: $38 million, yacht name: garcon, length: 220 feet, last recorded location: fethiye, turkey on august 8, 2022, value: $20 million, yacht name: kewpie, length: 80 feet, last recorded location: saint barthélemy on january 6, 2023, value: $3 million, yacht name: sussurro, length: 162 feet, last recorded location: la ciotat, france on january 9, 2023, value: $17 million, yacht name: umbra a, length: 40 feet, last recorded location: not available, registered in: not available, value: $1 million, yacht name: aquamarine*, length: 164 feet, last recorded location: vlissingen, netherlands on april 5, 2022, registered in: russia, value: $29.9 million.

* Aquamarine is owned by Jersey-based MHC Jersey Limited, which is owned by British Virgin Islands-based Norma Investments Limited. Prior to February 24, 2022, Norma’s beneficial owner was Abramovich; Norma’s ownership was transferred to David Davidovich, a business associate of Abramovich, on the same day, according to public filings. Davidovich was sanctioned by the U.K. on April 14 .

Roman Abramovich's Eclipse yacht.

Farkhad Akhmedov

Sanctioned by eu, u.k., canada, switzerland, yacht name: luna, length: 375 feet, last recorded location: hamburg, germany on july 4, 2022 ( frozen by german authorities on may 12, 2022), registered in: marshall islands, value: $196 million.

Farkhad Akhmedov's Luna yacht.

Vagit Alekperov

Sanctioned by u.k., australia, canada, yacht name: galactica super nova, length: 230 feet, last recorded location: off the coast of budva, montenegro on march 2, 2022 (departed tivat, montenegro on march 2), registered in: sierra leone, value: $67 million, yacht name: space, length: 114 feet, last recorded location: sevastopol, crimea on august 23, 2022, value: $8 million, yacht name: galactica, length: 263 feet, last recorded location: vladivostok, russia on october 1, 2022, value: not available.

Vagit Alekperov's Galactica Super Nova yacht.

Oleg Deripaska

Sanctioned by u.s., u.k., eu, canada, switzerland, australia, yacht name: clio, length: 238 feet, last recorded location: adler, russia on october 27, 2022, registered in: cayman islands, value: $58 million, yacht name: sputnik, length: 197 feet, last recorded location: göcek, turkey on november 9, 2022, registered in: antigua and barbuda, value: $19.75 million, yacht name: elden, length: 95 feet, last recorded location: volga river near sknyatino, russia on october 8, 2022, value: $1.9 million.

Oleg Deripaska.

Sergey Galitsky

Yacht name: quantum blue, length: 341 feet, last recorded location: off the coast of salalah, oman on march 22, 2022, value: $213 million.

Sergei Galitsky's Quantum Blue yacht.

Andrei Guriev

Sanctioned by u.s., u.k., yacht name: alfa nero, length: 267 feet, last recorded location: falmouth harbour, antigua and barbuda on november 3, 2022 ( blocked by the u.s. on august 2), value: $81 million.

Andrei Guriev's Alfa Nero yacht.

Dmitry Kamenshchik

Yacht name: flying fox, length: 446 feet, last recorded location: göcek, turkey on december 27, 2022 ( blocked by the u.s. on june 2), value: $455 million.

Dmitry Kamenshchik's Flying Fox yacht.

Suleiman Kerimov

Sanctioned by u.s., eu, u.k., canada, switzerland, australia, japan, yacht name: amadea, length: 348 feet, last recorded location: san diego, california on june 6 ( seized by u.s. authorities on may 5, 2022), registered in: united states, value: $300 million.

Suleiman Kerimov's Amadea yacht.

Igor Kesaev

Yacht name: my sky, length: 168 feet, last recorded location: crossroads superyacht marina, maldives on june 16, 2022, value: $30 million, yacht name: sky, length: 166 feet, last recorded location: limón bay, panama on january 9, 2023, value: $23 million.

Igor Kesaev.

Eduard Khudainatov

Sanctioned by eu, yacht name: divina barbara, length: 115 feet, last recorded location: rendsburg, germany on november 17, 2016, registered in: united kingdom, value: $9 million, alexey kuzmichev, sanctioned by u.s., eu, u.k., canada, switzerland, australia, yacht name: la petite ourse, length: 79 feet, last recorded location: antibes, france on august 11, 2022 ( frozen by french authorities on march 16, 2022; released after court decision on october 5, 2022), registered in: malta, value: $4.5 million, yacht name: la petite ourse ii, length: 54 feet, last recorded location: cannes, france on june 6, 2022 ( frozen by french authorities on march 21, 2022; released after court decision on december 9, 2022), value: $1.2 million, anatoly lomakin, yacht name: sea & us, length: 205 feet, igor makarov, sanctioned by canada, australia, yacht name: areti i, length: 128 feet, last recorded location: st. augustine, florida on october 24, 2022, value: $7 million.

Igor Makarov.

Iskander Makhmudov

Sanctioned by: u.s., u.k., yacht name: predator, length: 239 feet, last recorded location: kuşadası, turkey on january 4, 2023, registered in: st. kitts and nevis, value: $55 million, dmitry mazepin, sanctioned by: u.k., eu, switzerland, canada, australia, yacht name: aldabra, length: 97 feet, last recorded location: bodrum, turkey on october 7, 2022 (frozen by italian authorities), registered in: isle of man, length: 72 feet, last recorded location: n/a (frozen by italian authorities), registered in: n/a, andrey melnichenko, sanctioned by eu, u.k., u.s., switzerland, australia, yacht name: my a, length: 390 feet, last recorded location: ras al khaimah, united arab emirates on may 28, 2022, registered in: isle of man ( deregistered on march 16, 2022), value: $204 million, yacht name: sy a, length: 469 feet, last recorded location: trieste, italy on january 9, 2023 ( frozen by italian authorities on march 12, 2022), value: $578 million (valued by italian government).

Andrey Melnichenko's SY A sailing yacht.

Leonid Mikhelson

Sanctioned by U.K., Canada, Australia

Yacht name: pacific, length: 280 feet, last recorded location: abu dhabi, united arab emirates on december 25, 2022, registered in: malaysia, value: $115 million, yuri milner, yacht name: andromeda, length: 352 feet, last recorded location: off the coast of nassau, bahamas on january 9, 2023, value: $129 million, andrei molchanov, yacht name: aurora, length: 243 feet, last recorded location: istanbul, turkey on august 21, 2022, value: $110 million, alexey mordashov, sanctioned by eu, u.k., u.s., switzerland, australia, japan, yacht name: lady m, length: 213 feet, last recorded location: imperia, italy on june 6, 2022 ( frozen by italian authorities on march 4, 2022), registered in : cayman islands, value: $27 million, yacht name: nord, length: 464 feet, last recorded location: malacca strait near kuala selangor, malaysia on october 24, 2022.

Alexey Mordashov's Nord yacht.

Alexander Nesis

Yacht name: romea, length: 268 feet, last recorded location: malé, maldives on january 9, 2023.

Alexander Nesis.

Vladimir Potanin

Sanctioned by u.s., u.k., canada, australia, yacht name: nirvana, length: 290 feet, last recorded location: dubai, united arab emirates on january 9, 2023 ( blocked by the u.s. on december 15), value: $120 million.

Vladimir Potanin's Nirvana yacht.

Mikhail Prokhorov

Yacht name: av (formerly palladium), length: 312 feet, last recorded location: fort lauderdale, florida on january 9, 2023, value: $157 million.

Mikhail Prokhorov's Palladium yacht.

Dmitry Pumpyansky

Sanctioned by eu, u.k., u.s., switzerland, canada, australia, yacht name: axioma, length: 236 feet, last recorded location: gibraltar on january 9, 2023 ( detained by gibraltarian authorities on march 21, 2022)*, value: $42 million.

*Axioma was auctioned in August 2022 and is no longer owned by Pumpyansky.

Dmitry Pumpyansky's Axioma yacht.

Viktor Rashnikov

Sanctioned by eu, u.k., u.s., canada, switzerland, australia, yacht name: ocean victory, length: 459 feet, last recorded location: malé, maldives on march 1, 2022, value: $294 million.

Viktor Rashnikov's Ocean Victory yacht.

Arkady Rotenberg

Sanctioned by eu, u.s., u.k., australia, canada, japan, switzerland, yacht name: rahil, last recorded location: sochi, russia on december 1, 2022.

Arkady Rotenberg's Russian-registered Rahil yacht.

Boris Rotenberg

Length: 157 feet, last recorded location: marseille, france on january 9, 2023, registered in: luxembourg ( deregistered in april 2022, frozen by french authorities), value: $15 million, dmitry rybolovlev, yacht name: anna, length: 361 feet, value: $250 million.

Dmitry Rybolovlev.

Anatoly Sedykh

Yacht name: hermitage, length: 225 feet, last recorded location: dubai, united arab emirates on december 16, 2022, value: $73 million.

Anatoly Sedykh's Hermitage yacht.

Eugene Shvidler

Sanctioned by u.k., australia (shvidler was born in the u.s.s.r. and is a citizen of the u.s. and the u.k.), yacht name: le grand bleu, length: 354 feet, last recorded location: ponce, puerto rico on june 6, 2022, registered in: palau, value: $109 million.

Eugene Shvidler's Le Grand Bleu yacht.

Andrei Skoch

Sanctioned by u.s., eu, u.k., australia, canada, japan, switzerland, yacht name: madame gu, length: 325 feet, last recorded location: dubai, united arab emirates on march 6, 2022 ( blocked by the u.s. on june 2), value: $156 million.

Andrei Skoch's Madame Gu yacht.

Alexander Svetakov

Yacht name: cloudbreak, length: 246 feet, last recorded location: singapore on january 9, 2023, value: $98 million.

Alexander Svetakov's Cloudbreak yacht.

Gennady Timchenko

Sanctioned by: eu, u.s., u.k., australia, canada, japan, switzerland, yacht name: lena, length: 126 feet, last recorded location: sanremo, italy on september 24, 2022 ( frozen by italian authorities on march 4, 2022), registered in: british virgin islands.

Gennady Timchenko.

Oleg Tinkov

Sanctioned by u.k., australia ( dropped off forbes real-time billionaires on march 1), yacht name: la datcha, length: 252 feet, last recorded location: cabo san lucas, mexico on january 9, 2023, registered in: panama, value: $121 million, yacht name: ycm 90, length: 90 feet, value: $2 million.

Oleg Tinkov's La Datcha yacht.

Alisher Usmanov

Sanctioned by eu, u.k., u.s., australia, canada, japan, switzerland, yacht name: dilbar*, length: 512 feet, last recorded location: hamburg, germany on may 6, 2022 ( blocked by the u.s. on march 3, 2022 and frozen by german authorities on april 13, 2022), value: $588 million, yacht name: begham*, length: 131 feet, last recorded location: olbia, italy on october 25, 2021, value: $10.5 million.

* Dilbar is owned by Caymans-based Navis Marine Ltd. and Begham is owned by Caymans-based Highseas Yachting Ltd. Both Navis Marine Ltd. and Highseas Yachting Ltd. are owned by Cyprus-based Almenor Holdings Ltd. Almenor is in turn owned by Switzerland-based Pomerol Capital SA, which holds the shares "in trust for the benefit of" the Sister Trust, which a German Federal Police investigation found is held by Gulbakhor Ismailova, Usmanov’s sister. Ownership of Navis Marine Ltd. and Highseas Yachting Ltd. was transferred to Almenor in 2020.

Alisher Usmanov's Dilbar yacht.

Viktor Vekselberg

Sanctioned by: u.s., u.k., japan, canada, australia, yacht name: tango, length: 255 feet, last recorded location: palma de mallorca, spain on january 9, 2023 ( blocked by the u.s. on march 13, 2022 and seized by u.s. and spanish authorities on april 4, 2022), value: $90 million.

Viktor Vekselberg's Tango yacht.

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Who Owns Superyacht Nord? (The Mystery Unveiled)

The mysterious and magnificent Superyacht Nord has long captivated the imaginations of luxury yacht aficionados around the world.

But who owns this stunning vessel? In this article, we will uncover the mystery and explore the features, interior and exterior designs, estimated value, and significance of this luxurious superyacht.

We will also take a look at some stunning photographs of Superyacht Nord.

Come join us as we uncover the secrets of this incredible yacht – who owns it and why is it so special?

Table of Contents

Short Answer

The owner of superyacht Nord is Roman Abramovich, a Russian billionaire.

He bought the yacht, formerly known as Sussurro, in April 2010 for an estimated US$400 million.

It is the world’s second largest yacht, measuring 162.5 metres in length.

It has two helipads, two swimming pools, and a disco hall.

Who is Mikhail Prokhorov?

Mikhail Prokhorov is a Russian billionaire and oligarch best known for his ownership of the Brooklyn Nets basketball team. He made his fortune in the investment and banking industries, and is now widely considered to be one of the richest people in the world. Prokhorov’s wealth is estimated to be around $13 billion, and he is said to own one of the most expensive yachts in the world: Superyacht Nord.

Prokhorov has been in the spotlight since his purchase of the Brooklyn Nets in 2010, and his net worth has only grown since then.

He has also become known for his philanthropy, founding the One Foundation in 2011 to support educational and cultural initiatives in Russia.

Prokhorov has also been involved in Russian politics, running as an independent candidate for president in 2012.

Prokhorov is known for his lavish lifestyle, and his ownership of the Superyacht Nord is a perfect example of this.

The 110-meter-long yacht was built for him in 2018 by Lrssen Yachts, and is said to feature an infinity pool, helipad, and spa.

The interior of the yacht was designed by the renowned designer Studio Liaigre, while the exterior was designed by British designer Tim Heywood.

Superyacht Nord is estimated to be worth over 200 million, and is said to be one of the most luxurious and expensive yachts ever made.

The Features of Superyacht Nord

Superyacht Nord is a stunning 110-meter vessel built by Lrssen Yachts and owned by Russian billionaire and oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov.

It is one of the most luxurious and expensive yachts ever made, estimated to be worth over 200 million.

It features a sleek and modern design with incredible attention to detail and a number of luxurious features.

The exterior of Superyacht Nord was designed by renowned British designer Tim Heywood.

It features a sleek and modern hull with a black and white color scheme.

The yacht also features an expansive sun deck and a helipad for easy access.

The interior of the yacht was designed by the famed designer Studio Liaigre.

It is decorated in a chic and modern style, with an emphasis on luxury and comfort.

The yacht features a large main salon with ample seating, a formal dining area, and a bar area.

The yacht also features an infinity pool, spa, and a gym.

Additionally, Superyacht Nord features a large selection of toys and tenders, including a submarine, jet skis, and a speedboat.

As one of the most luxurious and expensive yachts ever made, Superyacht Nord is truly a sight to behold.

It is a testament to the skill and craftsmanship of its designers and builders, and an impressive display of wealth and power.

The mystery of its owner has been unveiled, and we can all marvel at the beauty of this incredible vessel.

The Interior Design of Superyacht Nord

When it comes to luxury yachts, the interior design is just as important as the exterior.

Superyacht Nord is no exception.

The interior of this 110-meter yacht was designed by renowned French designer, Studio Liaigre.

The interior features modern and minimalistic designs with natural materials like wood, stone, and leather.

The yacht has a classic yet contemporary feel and offers a luxurious and comfortable atmosphere.

The yacht features a large main salon with a large dining area and a full-service bar.

The salon has plenty of seating and a large TV for entertainment.

The lounge area also features floor-to-ceiling windows for spectacular views of the sea.

The yacht also boasts a large infinity pool, a helipad, and a spa.

The interior of Superyacht Nord is designed for luxury and comfort.

The yacht has five guest cabins and a master suite.

The master suite has its own private balcony and a large bathroom with a Jacuzzi.

All of the cabins feature en-suite bathrooms, and are decked out with the finest furnishings and materials.

It is no wonder that Superyacht Nord is one of the most luxurious and expensive yachts ever made.

With its modern design and luxurious features, it is a true masterpiece of engineering and craftsmanship.

The yacht is estimated to be worth over 200 million, making it one of the most sought-after yachts in the world.

The Exterior Design of Superyacht Nord

The exterior of Superyacht Nord has been designed by British designer Tim Heywood, and it is a sight to behold.

The 110-meter long yacht features a sleek and modern design, with a bold black hull and a white superstructure.

The yacht boasts an expansive sundeck with an infinity pool and Jacuzzi, as well as a helipad and two tenders.

The exterior also features multiple terraces and outdoor seating areas, perfect for lounging and entertaining.

Furthermore, the yacht has a number of sea terraces, offering guests unparalleled views of the open ocean.

The exterior of Superyacht Nord is an impressive sight that is sure to turn heads wherever it goes.

The exterior of the Superyacht Nord was designed with functionality in mind as well.

The yacht is equipped with the latest navigation and communications technology, allowing it to travel to remote locations without issue.

Additionally, the yacht is equipped with a state-of-the-art security system to ensure the safety of its passengers.

It even has an escape pod, in case of emergency.

All these features make Superyacht Nord the perfect vessel for luxury cruises and long voyages alike.

In addition to its impressive design, Superyacht Nord also boasts an impressive price tag.

It is estimated to be worth over 200 million dollars, making it one of the most expensive and luxurious yachts ever made.

Clearly, it was designed with luxury and comfort in mind, and it is no wonder that Russian billionaire and oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov chose to own it.

The Estimated Value of Superyacht Nord

Superyacht Nord, owned by Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, is said to be one of the most luxurious and expensive yachts ever made.

Estimates suggest that the 110-meter vessel is worth over 200 million.

The sheer size and opulence of the yacht make it an impressive sight to behold.

The yacht was built by Lrssen Yachts in 2018 and features an infinity pool, helipad, and spa.

The interior was designed by renowned designer Studio Liaigre, while the exterior was designed by British designer Tim Heywood.

The overall design is said to be a combination of modern style and classic elegance, giving the yacht an air of sophistication and luxury.

In addition to the lavish amenities onboard, Superyacht Nord is also equipped with the latest technology.

It boasts a state-of-the-art navigation system, an advanced security system, and a range of other amenities that make it one of the most advanced vessels ever built.

The estimated value of Superyacht Nord is a testament to its luxurious design and the immense amount of work that went into the construction of the yacht.

It is a prime example of the lengths that the wealthy and powerful will go to in order to enjoy the finest luxuries available.

The Significance of Superyacht Nord

Superyacht Nord is much more than just another luxurious yacht.

This 110-meter vessel is a symbol of opulence and power, belonging to the worlds wealthiest individuals.

It is also a symbol of the Russian billionaire and oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov, who was the mastermind behind its construction.

The yacht was built by Lrssen Yachts in 2018 and features an infinity pool, helipad, and spa, as well as a stunning interior designed by renowned designer Studio Liaigre and an exterior designed by British designer Tim Heywood.

This luxurious superyacht is estimated to be worth over 200 million, making it one of the most expensive yachts ever made.

It is a statement of Prokhorovs wealth and power, and a symbol of his success.

It is a vessel that allows him to feel on top of the world, literally.

The superyacht also has a significant meaning for the shipbuilding industry.

It is a testament to the hard work and dedication of the craftsmen who designed and built it.

It serves as a reminder of the skill and precision required to create such a magnificent vessel, and of the possibilities that can be achieved when the right people are put to work.

Superyacht Nord is a masterpiece that will be remembered for its beauty and grandeur, and will serve as an inspiration for future yacht builders.

Pictures of Superyacht Nord

The pictures of Superyacht Nord are stunning.

From the exterior, the yacht has a sleek and modern design, with a white hull and a black upper deck.

The infinity pool is a stunning feature, along with the helipad, spa and other amenities.

Inside, the interior is luxurious and contemporary, with designer furniture, modern artwork and rich materials.

The yacht is truly one of a kind, and has been designed to the highest standards of luxury.

It is no wonder that it is said to be worth over 200 million.

The designer Studio Liaigre and the British designer Tim Heywood deserve credit for their work in creating a yacht that is both beautiful and functional.

Final Thoughts

After unraveling the mystery of who owns the magnificent Superyacht Nord, we now know it is none other than Russian billionaire and oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov.

We have explored the stunning features, interior, and exterior design of the yacht, as well as its estimated value.

It is no wonder why Superyacht Nord is considered one of the most luxurious and expensive yachts ever made.

Now that you know the story behind this stunning yacht, why not take a look for yourself and marvel at its beauty?

James Frami

At the age of 15, he and four other friends from his neighborhood constructed their first boat. He has been sailing for almost 30 years and has a wealth of knowledge that he wants to share with others.

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Humongous $200M superyacht arrives in Vancouver

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A 95-metre superyacht priced at $200 million was spotted cruising through False Creek before docking in North Vancouver. 

Attessa V Yacht was built in 2010 by Blohm and Voss, a German shipbuilding and engineering company. It arrived in Vancouver on Tuesday and moved over to a dock in North Vancouver on Wednesday morning.

AV can entertain 24 guests in 12 rooms and has a crew of 33 people. It features a large swimming pool on the deck, a private movie theatre and a jet pool jacuzzi. 

The superyacht was designed by Michael Leach Design and soars in ’speed and style.’

It costs $10 to $20 million per year to run the yacht.

Website SuperYacht.com lists the owner of the AV as Dennis Washington, an 88-year-old American billionaire whose net worth is listed at US$6.4 billion and is ranked number 397 in Forbes' richest people in the world . 

Washington, from Montana, claims to be ‘self-made’ and owns a copper mining, marine transportation and heavy equipment business, according to Forbes. He is married with two children. In an interview with Forbes.com, Washington said his passion is boats. 

Washington’s network of companies includes Washington Marine Group and Seaspan Shipyards in North Vancouver, where Kyle Washington, Dennis Washington’s son, is executive chairman.

The AV Yacht was previously known as Palladium and is listed as an award-winning superyacht.  It was previously owned by Mikhail Prokhorov, a Russian oligarch and previous owner of the Brooklyn Nets. The yacht drew attention when The Late Show host Stephen Colbert visited Prokhorov on the yacht. 

Superyachts flocking to Vancouver Island

Superyachts flock to B.C. every year. One recently drew attention in B.C.’s capital when a Brazilian billionaire docked in Victoria. 

The 62-metre-long vessel called the Anawa was docked at Ship Point on May 30, clad with its own helicopter on deck. 

Billionaire Jorge Paulo Lemann owns the yacht, according to Superfanyacht.com. Forbes.com says the investor-philanthropist lives in Switzerland and is worth $14.8 billion.

Anawa was custom-designed and built in 2020 by Damen Yachting. It’s one of the company’s SeaXplorer class of vessels, billed as “long-range, luxury expedition” yachts.

It can carry 12 guests and 15 crew plus a captain, Damen said.

Back in 2020, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones's yacht was spotted in the  waters off Vancouver Island . The "Bravo Eugenia" is worth an estimated quarter-billion dollars.

The superyacht is designed to use 30 per cent less fuel than other vessels of its size and class but it doesn't skimp on amenities. The "Bravo Eugenia" can accommodate 14 guests and 30 crew members and features six guest suites, a beach lounge, spa and gym.

On Tuesday, the AV Yacht wasn’t the only yacht drawing attention. A 32-metre vessel called the Snowbored was passing through False Creek  with the final destination of Galiano Island. 

The Snowbored, built by Westport in 2003, is a 32-metre vessel with a satin cherry wood interior, and a sundeck sporting a hot tub, wet bar, and lounge pads. It also has a fighting chair and rocket launcher for sport fishing, and can launch a Novurania tender and Yamaha waverunners.

In a statement to Glacier Media, the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority says anyone wishing to view the Attessa V in Vancouver's inner harbour area by boat "is urged to ensure they do so from a safe distance." "We love seeing boaters and paddlers out enjoying the waters that make up the Port of Vancouver," says Jason Krott, manager of marine operations and fleet. "Our focus is working with all users to build the awareness and understanding needed to support a safe shared space for recreational and commercial traffic."

To see the inside of the AV superyacht, visit the designer's website .  

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Keith Gessen: Meet Mikhail Prokhorov

By Keith Gessen

Being a Russian oligarch these days isn’t easy. The best and brightest of them are in exile or in jail; others, after feasting on leverage during the commodities boom, now have tummies full of debt. Of those still in the game, Mikhail Prokhorov is the richest, with an estimated net worth, according to Forbes , of $9.5 billion. At six-foot-seven, he is also the tallest, though this alone cannot explain the complicated process whereby he appears ready to buy the New Jersey Nets and build a stadium for them in Brooklyn.

Prokhorov is a new name to SportsCenter viewers, but in Russia he is well known as the last of the freewheeling, yacht-riding, model-escorting oligarchs. (Prokhorov is single.) He made his fortune when he and a partner, Vladimir Potanin, won control of Norilsk Nickel, the world’s largest producer of nickel and palladium, in one of the infamous “loans-for-shares” auctions of 1995. (They were infamous because they were rigged.) Prokhorov, however, managed to keep himself out of the news until early 2007, when local authorities arrested him at his favorite French ski resort on charges of procurement of prostitutes. He spent four days in jail before being released without charge, but the repercussions in Russia were serious. Potanin apparently used the opportunity to try to push Prokhorov out of Norilsk Nickel. After a year of increasingly hostile negotiations, Prokhorov sold his share in Norilsk to a third oligarch for a stake in an aluminum giant and about $7 billion in cash. This buyout seemed like the end of Prokhorov’s days as a serious player, until world equity and commodity prices crashed a few months later and he woke up as the richest man in Russia.

But what to do with $9.5 billion? He would be wise to spend it all inside Russia; other oligarchs who have not invested in the motherland have incurred the wrath of the Kremlin. So Prokhorov has funded two expensively produced magazines ( one of them is edited by my sister, Masha Gessen); has continued to support the Mikhail Prokhorov Fund , perhaps Russia’s most innovative cultural foundation (run by his sister, Irina); and has thrown a party in St. Petersburg, aboard the old battleship Aurora, at which, as the English-language edition of Pravda put it, “strong beverages made the guests lose control over themselves. Some of them decided to jump overboard to swim in the Neva River.” Moscow has a popular coffee chain that serves a ten-dollar cappuccino—but even a big man like Prokhorov cannot drink nine hundred and fifty million cappuccinos. So he has begun to look abroad.

This week’s news about Prokhorov and the Nets began circulating as a rumor in Russia in July. How he managed to clear the proposed deal with Putin is unknown. The Moscow-based business journalist John Helmer has somewhat ingeniously speculated that an earlier rumor from the summer, about Prokhorov buying the Italian soccer team Roma, is connected to this: that Silvio Berlusconi asked his friend Putin to find someone to bail out Roma, and that Prokhorov is in fact buying Roma as a condition for being allowed to buy the Nets. Helmer counts up the damage :

$330 million in cash down and pledged money—more than twice what a reasonable man would pay for a football club in a faraway place—in exchange for a permit to spend $700 million on a loss-making basketball team in another faraway place.

Well, perhaps. The ordinarily hyper-sarcastic Russian press, for its part, has been unnervingly straitlaced about the news.

As for Prohkorov, he recently took to his blog to explain the situation to his online fans (and perhaps to some, in higher places, who are not his fans). Earlier this month, the embattled oligarch Oleg Deripaska (who bought Prokhorov out of Norilsk Nickel, and used to be Russia’s richest man), was asked to explain why, as the owner of a failing Russian automaker (GAZ), he was buying a failing German automaker (Opel) from a failing American automaker (G.M.). He suggested in his own defense that GAZ would be able to learn Opel’s engineering secrets. Similarly, Prokhorov argued that, by taking over an N.B.A. franchise, he would be able to help Russian coaches and players study the N.B.A. and bring their knowledge back home, and rejuvenate Russian basketball! Pay no attention, Prokhorov concluded, to the carping of the “pseudo-patriots.”

Prokhorov’s ordinarily docile commenters (“Great post, Mikhail Dmitrovich! Incidentally, I have a business plan I’d like to run by you…”) weren’t buying it.

Why what do you mean, Mikhail, what pseudo-patriots, why pay attention to the opinion of your fellow citizens, who cares, just keep going. You’re a strong, smart person, later on you’ll be able to tell your children or your foreign friends that there was once a country, it was called Russia.

We’ll see. In Norilsk—a city constructed by labor camp prisoners and now so polluted that no vegetation grows within twenty miles of the city center—Prokhorov and his partner had first to remove a stubborn sitting factory director, Anatoly Filatov, before taking over the plant. This took a long time. In the downtown Brooklyn area known as Atlantic Yards, a neighborhood almost equally devoid of vegetation due to the “development projects” of current Nets owner Bruce Ratner, Prokhorov will have to get past the no less stubborn Daniel Goldstein, the man who almost single-handedly has been holding up the construction of the stadium for the past five years . The obvious joke here would be that Prokhorov will make Goldstein an offer he can’t refuse, but, in fact, according to one government official I spoke to recently, back in the mid-nineteen-nineties Prokhorov and his partner couldn’t figure out how to remove Filatov and had to appeal to the government for help. This is unlikely to impress Goldstein. On the other hand, a gift to Brooklyn of the world’s largest trampoline, plus Malevich’s “ Black Square ,” would go a long way.

Update: According to ESPN, it’s a deal .

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Haute yacht of the week: palladium.

by Haute Living

Mikhail Prokhorov’s 94-meter Palladium is one of the most exquisite yachts around today. The name of the yacht is particularily entertaining since Prokhorov was invovled with the company Norilsk Nickel, the world’s largest producer of nickel and palladium.

The yacht is made by the German ship company Yard Blohm + Voss is designed by Michael Leach Design Ltd. London, who is responsible for both the outside styling and the interior design.

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The Incredible Life Of Russia's Newest Presidential Contender—Nets Owner Mikhail Prokhorov

Mikhail Prokhorov , owner of the New Jersey Nets and one of Russia's richest tycoons, has announced he will be running in Russia's presidential election , the Moscow Times reports.

Prokhorov will need to receive two million signatures in support of his candidacy to be included on ballots next March.

One thing's for sure—Prokhorov, Russia's third-richest man with an estimated fortune of $18 billion according to Forbes —has the financial wherewithal for a presidential run challenging Prime Minister Vladimir Putin .

The self-made billionaire, a bachelor, is an adventurer who loves to spend money. Americans got to know him last year, when he purchased an 80% stake in the soon-to-be Brooklyn Nets.

He owns a yacht, though it makes him seasick , and once fi lmed daredevil stunts on a jet ski and hired a production company to set the spectacle to music.

This is Mikhail Prokhorov, the third richest man in Russia and 32nd richest man in the world.

His Moscow home has an indoor pool, party room, and massive gym.

Here's the party room.

And here is the gym, complete with virtual ski machine.

He's even got a Kalashnikov assault rifle -- it was made for special forces.

Prokhorov keeps a model of his yacht, Solemar, in his home. He says the boat makes him seasick.

Here's the real thing: it reportedly cost $45 million. Prokhorov uses it for jet skiing.

He also owns two private jets, a Gulfstream V that cost $45 million...

And a $30 million Falcon 990.

His watch, a Pierre Kunz Red Gold Tourbillon, cost $138,000.

He paid $150 million to launch Snob, a magazine aimed at Russia's global elite, in 2010.

And in March, he picked up North Island in Seychelles for around $35 million. It came with a small hotel.

He almost bought this $750 million French estate in 2008, but backed out. The failed deal set him back $55 million.

Of course the Nets, whom he bought for a reported $200 million, are his best toy of all.

He doesn't own an apartment in New York (yet), but we can't wait until he does (neither can the city's brokers).

Now read about another incredible life

The FABULOUS Homes, Planes, And Other Toys Of Oprah Winfrey >

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Goodnight, Sweet Oligarch: The Legacy That Mikhail Prokhorov Leaves Behind

The Russian owner stormed in on a Jet Ski, but will now exit the NBA with nothing more than a press release. Here’s a look back at his wild run with the Nets.

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What I remember most is the smirk. There sat Mikhail Prokhorov, mere days after the NBA’s Board of Governors had approved his bid to purchase a majority stake in the then–New Jersey Nets, chatting with David Aldridge in an introductory interview . Aldridge asked Prokhorov—a figure unknown to NBA fans, save for those with an abiding interest in nickel mining and financial intrigue in post-Soviet Russia —what his sales pitch would be when trying to lure a top-flight free agent to the Nets. Say, one considered the best player in the world, who was about to hit the open market .

Prokhorov highlighted the “competitive advantages” of giving a player the chance to create a franchise’s history “practically from scratch,” and the Nets’ opportunity to create the NBA’s first “really global team” by virtue of his international influence. Then the league’s first foreign-born owner expressed the belief that, no matter what baggage his new purchase might carry from its largely unremarkable past, he could still land any whale that got close enough to his boat.

“I feel pretty sure [I will be able] to persuade the best of the best that the Nets is the place they need to be,” he said.

And then, there it was.

prokhorov smirk

There was such ease in that smirk, such confidence. It betrayed the assurance of a man who knew it would all work out in the end, that this bet couldn’t bust, and maybe that was because he knew something you didn’t. Now, nearly 10 years after paying $223 million for 80 percent of the Nets, and more than three and a half years after taking full ownership of the team and Barclays Center in a deal valued at $1.9 billion , Prokhorov is cashing out.

The Nets announced Friday that Prokhorov had entered an agreement to sell his majority stake to Joseph Tsai, the billionaire cofounder of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. Tsai bought 49 percent of the team two years ago for $1 billion. He’ll reportedly get the rest for an additional $1.35 billion , bringing the purchase price to $2.35 billion, topping what Steve Ballmer shelled out for the Clippers and Tilman Fertitta paid for the Rockets to become the new richest franchise sale in NBA history.

Add in what Tsai is paying for Barclays Center itself, and the total cost of the deal reportedly comes to about $3.5 billion —a monster profit that you could credibly argue didn’t owe much to anything that Prokhorov himself actually did . Maybe he knew something we didn’t after all.

When the Board of Governors signs off on the sale, which the Nets say should happen “by the end of September,” that’ll be the end of the Mikhail Prokhorov era in the NBA. It’s been … eventful .

Prokhorov descended upon the NBA as something of an international man of mystery. He was reportedly worth $17.8 billion at the time of his arrival. There was no small amount of curiosity over how he built that fortune, from selling stonewashed jeans, to starting a bank in Russia’s early days as a wobbling market economy, to sweetheart “loans for shares” deals that made him the manager of Russia’s largest platinum and nickel producer—and a billionaire. “Since childhood, money had a way of finding me,” he told Julia Ioffe of The New Yorker in 2012.

That piece also included Prokhorov’s answer to a question about whether he’d ever been part of corrupt dealings during his rise in Russia: “Yes, of course I participated in them. What, don’t I live in this country?” That specter of impropriety, and associated questions surrounding what role Prokhorov played in Russia’s political ecosystem—how real was that presidential run , anyway?—always clung to the edges of his tenure, but never really progressed from smoke to fire (though Henry Abbott has spent quite a bit of time digging into it of late). An obscenely wealthy Russian oligarch with connections to Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin doesn’t cut quite as charming a figure in the States these days. A decade ago, though, it made Prokhorov an object of fascination.

Prokhorov was famously arrested at a ski resort in the French Alps in 2007 and held for several days on suspicion that he’d flown women in from Russia to supply them “as prostitutes to his wealthy friends.” He was released without charges—French officials later apologized, and even awarded him the Legion of Honor —but the ensuing scandal resulted in Prokhorov being pressured to sell his shares of Norilsk Nickel. The $7 billion windfall made him unbelievably rich— Russia’s richest man , for a spell—and he lived like it.

He went Hot Rod on his personal watercraft in the Maldives , and introduced all of us broke blog boys to something called “heli-skiing.” He told 60 Minutes that he didn’t know where he’d left his $50 million, 200-foot yacht. He spoke about his devotion to the ancient Tibetan martial art of tescao , and described himself as “a boa constrictor” due to his “calm, good mood.” He frequently drew comparisons to the villains in James Bond movies, to the point where those connections became clichéd; they still kept popping up, though, because clichés don’t become clichés if they don’t have a ring of truth to them.

Prokhorov also entered the NBA, in a sense, as a means to an end—a Brink’s truck to the rescue of then-Nets owner Bruce Ratner. Battered by the 2008 recession, the real estate developer needed an infusion of cash to sustain his Atlantic Yards project —one that got off the ground only through the threatened use of eminent domain to clear out buildings and people from the neighborhood surrounding the planned arena site. Providing that infusion allowed for the completion of Barclays Center, and the Nets’ move into it before the 2012-13 season. It also drastically changed the neighboring community , and some of the promised benefits for area residents affected by the project appear no closer to being realized ; on the court and off, Prokhorov leaves behind unfinished business.

As soon as he arrived, Prokhorov took aim at the Knicks . On the eve of the 2010 free-agency period, when the Knicks had cleared the decks to make a run at LeBron James , Prokhorov bought a massive billboard on the corner of 34th Street and Eighth Avenue in Manhattan, directly across from Madison Square Garden. The ad depicted Prokhorov alongside Jay-Z, a longtime LeBron associate and a newly minted part-owner of the Nets , under the heading, “The Blueprint for Greatness.” James didn’t wind up choosing either New York team, but the battle lines were drawn: Prokhorov insisted that within five years, Knicks fans would become Nets fans , and the Nets would be NBA champions . If they weren’t, Prokhorov—fond of speaking about how much he loved the opposite sex, and of “partying it up with a phalanx” of them in the mountains —would submit to the ultimate punishment: marriage .

The winning didn’t happen. (Neither did the wedding .) But Prokhorov’s injection of personality made the Nets … I don’t know, noteworthy. A franchise that had been forgettable for most of its existence suddenly had some juice, some flair—a chance to become something new, exciting, and formidable.

The excitement didn’t come right away, though, no matter how willing Prokhorov was to splash the cash. Despite the confidence belied by that smirk, he came up empty in attempts to land superstars like James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, Carmelo Anthony—a pursuit that saw Prokhorov pull the rare move of announcing he was cutting off trade talks during an on-camera media session —and Dwight Howard. The Nets did trade for Deron Williams, which didn’t go quite the way they’d hoped. It did lead to one of my favorite odd Prokhorov moments, though: when the Nets were later competing with the Mavericks for Williams’s affections in free agency, and Prokhorov said that if Dallas owner Mark Cuban won the point guard’s favor, he would “crush [Cuban] with the kickboxing throwdown.” (Williams wound up spurning the Mavs’ advances to re-up with the Nets, sparing all parties involved from trading high kicks.)

With Prokhorov’s imprimatur and wide-open checkbook, general manager Billy King aimed to build a contender around Williams and Brook Lopez, swinging deals to import Gerald Wallace and Joe Johnson for the franchise’s first season in its new home in Brooklyn. The Nets won 49 games, their most in seven years, but failed to capture either the passion of the New York market or their first taste of postseason success, falling to a short-handed Bulls team in seven games in the opening round of the playoffs.

Then came the all in move—the blockbuster deal with the Celtics on the night of the 2013 NBA draft that brought veteran stars Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, and Jason Terry to Brooklyn in exchange for three future first-round draft picks and the ability to swap rights on a fourth first-rounder. The deal replenished Boston’s coffers after the end of its Big Three run, putting the Celtics back on a path to postseason success. It landed the Nets one playoff series win, a seven-game triumph over the Raptors in 2014, but nothing more. Brooklyn’s veteran core aged. Pierce and head coach Jason Kidd both skipped town; Prokhorov said farewell to Kidd with the immortal line, “Don’t let the door hit you where the good Lord split you.” Soon enough, Garnett was traded back to Minnesota.

Suddenly, the Nets had nothing to show for their title chase but an underwhelming collection of talent that couldn’t even compete in the East, and no draft assets with which to add high-impact young players. And suddenly, Prokhorov—who had shelled out more than $186 million in salary and luxury tax payments in 2013-14, a season in which the Nets’ basketball business reportedly lost a staggering $144 million —no longer felt quite so eager to write big checks for a bad team.

Save for the occasional core-blasting, tescao-based dribbling exhibition , we didn’t hear too much from Prokhorov for a while after that. As the Nets’ descent into salary cap hell led to a prolonged fallow period, the owner seemed to stop finding the franchise fun. His name stopped popping up in the papers, unless it was to tamp down a new report about his being open to selling off his stake . A couple of years after those denials started, he sold Tsai 49 percent.

In on-court terms, Prokhorov’s run was a failure. The Nets own the NBA’s fourth-worst winning percentage since he bought the team. They’ve made just three postseason appearances in nine seasons, with only one playoff series win. They consummated not only the worst trade in recent NBA history, but a second that stings plenty in its own right: the 2012 deal that sent Gerald Wallace to Portland in exchange for a couple of veterans and a top-three-protected first-round pick that would wind up becoming Damian Lillard. Off the court, though, Prokhorov’s swagger and willingness to spend helped fundamentally alter the idea of who the Nets could be, from an afterthought in East Rutherford to an ascendant could-be glamour franchise. His own record won’t look all that rosy, but as a friend who covered the team before and during Prokhorov’s tenure said to me this weekend, “Kevin Durant doesn’t sign with Bruce Ratner’s Nets.”

The lengthy rebuild began to bear fruit last season , with Kenny Atkinson coaching Sean Marks’s roster to the playoffs for the first time since 2015. But Prokhorov didn’t suddenly become a fixture at games, or a Cuban-style mouthpiece for the team’s resurgence. The team came around, and the fans started to come , and now, after landing two bona fide superstars this summer, the Nets are finally on the verge of becoming the kind of marquee team Prokhorov loudly proclaimed they one day would.

He won’t be there to watch it happen, though. If he’s watching at all, it’ll be from afar, with the kind of peace that only a multibillion-dollar come-up can buy. You can almost see the smirk from here.

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The Russian Samovar, a recent evening, 10 p.m. Green-shaded lamps throw unappetizing light on platefuls of chicken Kiev; the theater across the street has just disgorged the Jersey Boys crowd. The first of the restaurant’s two floors is hosting a “writers’ cabaret” sponsored by a Moscow-based magazine called Snob. At the white grand piano gifted by Mikhail Baryshnikov, writer Ludmilla Petrushevskaya is belting out a Russian rendition of “Blue Canary.” Venture capitalist Alex Fridlyand, novelist Lara Vapnyar, and software mogul Stepan Pachikov look on between bites. On the second floor, in an unrelated celebration, half the masthead of Moscow’s anti-Putin newspaper Novaya Gazeta (in town for an award) is getting soused with the daughter of the late émigré novelist Sergei Dovlatov. At the upstairs bar, Moscow publisher Andrew Paulson is schmoozing with PR man Ilya Merenzon. A few feet away, n+1 editor Kostya Gessen—you may know him as Keith—and his girlfriend, Emily Gould, are chatting with Very Short List editor Alex Abramovich. Samovar’s owner, Roman Kaplan, bisects the crowd with a carafe of cranberry vodka. By the end of the night he will have drunk a dozen shots of it himself.

The total conflicts of interest I have counted in the above scene: nine. I have worked for three of these people, tried to curry promotional favor with two, publicly feuded with three more, and competed for a woman with one, and that’s not counting all the free vodka from Roman. Such is the very essence of the Russian experience in New York: high-end striving mixed with Appalachian incest.

Then again, it all pales before the main, unspoken bias permeating both floors of the restaurant. Almost everyone at the Samovar tonight owes a little something—from a steady salary to a bite of the chicken to something more abstract—to a man who isn’t here. He is the one footing the night’s bill through Snob —a relatively new entity, set to launch its first New York marketing campaign this fall, that is both a private club uniting some of New York’s most ambitious Russian arrivistes and, in its magazine iteration, one of the world’s most lavishly funded editorial projects. He’s bought us all, to some extent, and a chunk of New York to go with us. At this point, I suspect, you even know his name.

When Mikhail Prokhorov—gangly, boyish, 45, and a billionaire seventeen times over—announced his purchase of the New Jersey Nets and a majority stake of their yet-unbuilt arena at the Atlantic Yards, he leaped into the city’s collective consciousness with a speed unusual for any foreigner, let alone a Russian. The Nets are not a trophy skyscraper, whose ownership ultimately matters only to the kind of people who keep track of trophy skyscrapers. They are a ticket to instant popular-culture importance. By becoming the first foreign owner of an NBA team, Prokhorov simultaneously established himself as a major figure in one of the world’s most glamorous businesses (in the world capital of the sport, no less) and a central player in New York’s biggest real-estate drama after ground zero. The scale of his trick didn’t really hit home until a May 19 breakfast photo op with Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Jay-Z: a perfectly orchestrated tableau of New York relevance. The only other Russian I can think of who has managed to slip into the city’s cast of notable characters as effortlessly is Mikhail Baryshnikov. But that’s where the comparison ends. Prokhorov is the face of an altogether new kind of Russian—newer, even, than the so-called New Russians of the late nineties—that’s recently been proliferating in town. Through Snob, he’s also the group’s chief benefactor and facilitator, both a member of the tribe and, in a critical sense, its creator.

The Russian community in New York used to come in four distinct varieties, arrangeable, like single malts, by casking date. There were heirs of exiled Czarist-era blue bloods, paper-skinned, cradling their titles; you’ve probably met one if you ever took a ballet class. Next up were Soviet immigrants of the seventies, the generation of Joseph Brodsky that would never let you forget their plight. Then came the “sausage immigration” of the nineties, mostly Jewish, mostly provincial, seduced less by freedom than by comfort yet squeaking in on political-refugee papers: More than 60,000 came to the U.S. in 1992 alone. Finally, there were the latest arrivals, treating New York as a prize for having made it in Moscow: the cocky, scowling post-Soviet oligarchs and Fifth Avenue shoppers with their endlessly mockable excesses.

The Global Russians, as Snob calls the group, are crystallized from all of the above. Broadly speaking, the term indicates a combination of Russian culture and language with Western education, a well-stamped passport, and liberal Western views. The category is big enough to encompass a second-generation novelist, a fashion designer who arrived here at the age of 5, a businessman swinging by for a conference, and an NBA team owner. They’re not interested in the Russian ghetto of Brighton Beach or the Russian assimilated culture in Fair Lawn, New Jersey. They’re dismissive of the nouveau riche shoppers and clubbers. They think they’re better than those others are. They’re consumed by cosmopolitanism and all it entails. They strive, they snub; they are, by any definition, snobs. By the way, I am kidding no one with this “they” business. I’ve been here since 1998, English is my second language, and simple honesty prevents me from pretending I don’t want some small version of the same.

The Global Russian influence is all over contemporary New York, in motley variations. In real estate, diamond mogul Lev Leviev, a reputed friend of Putin’s, owns the lion’s share of the old New York Times Building, the citadel-like Apthorp apartment complex, and the MetLife clock tower. Vassily Anisimov leased dormitories to NYU. Tamir Sapir, who was born Temur Sepiashvili in Georgia and made his first fortune in New York selling VCRs and other electronics (and also securing oil contracts from former Soviet diplomats), has $2 billion in active development projects; his hard-partying son, Alex Sapir, and daughter, Zina Sapir-Rosen, have bankrolled a few of Donald Trump’s latest ventures, including the Trump SoHo condo-hotel. Hotels seem to be especially appealing: The Gansevoort and 60 Thompson, as well as some of André Balazs’s properties, are rumored to have Russian backing. Muscovites have made their homes or pieds-à-terre at the Plaza, the Time Warner Center, and 15 Central Park West. Edward Mermelstein, a Ukrainian-born real-estate lawyer specializing in massive deals for Eastern European clientele, handled about 120 Russian closings in New York over the last three years. Before the financial crisis, the average price was between $7 million and $10 million, with the top end in the stratospheric $30 million to $40 million range. Then, of course, there’s airport mogul Valery Kogan, whose ultimately aborted attempt to build one of the largest mansions in Greenwich (complete with 26 toilets) fueled the Connecticut enclave’s gossip mill for years. As for the Russian contributions to Wall Street, they tend to be low-profile: There’s an enormous number of people with Soviet math educations who work on the analytical side at places like Goldman Sachs. Some, like Ruvim Breydo, parlay their skills into hedge-fund fortunes. Others toil anonymously, and when we do hear about them—like computer programmer Sergey Aleynikov, who allegedly swiped Goldman’s proprietary trading software—it’s rarely good news.

In the world of art, the main seat of Russian influence is the Guggenheim. Moscow-based oligarch Vladimir Potanin sits on its board of trustees. So did socialite and developer Janna Bullock, until recently. Phillips de Pury, the world’s third-largest contemporary-art auction house, is now owned by the Russian luxury retailer Mercury Group. It is currently getting ready to move into a 25,500-square-foot space at 450 Park Avenue, to compete more directly with Sotheby’s and Christie’s—both of which have dedicated Russian-art divisions. So does Larry Gagosian’s empire, which has recently added a sophisticated operation devoted to Russian outreach.

‘Snob’ is “a multistep strategic game by Prokhorov, who wants to feed and domesticate a certain kind of Establishment to lean on it for support later.”

With the exception of the modernist Ilya Kabakov, the Russians in the gallery game tend to crowd on the buyers’ side; in the performing arts, however, they’re the product. The American Ballet Theatre company is 25 percent Russian (four out of sixteen). Russian names dot the program notes at the New York Philharmonic, where conductor Valery Gergiev has been a regular presence. In pop, there are Regina Spektor and Gogol Bordello’s Eugene Hütz, of the Bronx and the Lower East Side respectively, both plying very different but very Russian good-girl and bad-boy personas.

The literary scene is a fiefdom ruled by novelist Gary Shteyngart, 37, probably the most successful New York novelist in the under-40 bracket. (His main rival for that title, Jonathan Safran Foer, can be seen as an interesting case of a wannabe Russian, an Updike to his Roth.) Shteyngart came to Queens from what was then Leningrad at the age of 7 and, by his own recollection, lost the last trace of his accent by 14. He could have easily disappeared into the American workforce, he says, and nearly did. “Once we figure out the dress code, we look like everyone else,” he tells me over a vodka-and-tonic, the ultimate Russian-American drink if you think about it. “Plus most of us are Jewish anyway.” He parlayed this identity tension into two best-selling novels, The Russian Debutante’s Handbook and Absurdistan. His upcoming third, the futuristic satire Super Sad True Love Story, marks a tentative step away from the Russianness (although the protagonist’s name still ends in -ov).

Shteyngart’s ascent opened the floodgates for Russian-identified New York writers of every possible pedigree, age, and talent level. In a literary climate that puts a premium on authentic immigrant experience, they had the best of both worlds. They were sufficiently exotic but easily relatable. Russia gave them mystery, New York (and Jewishness) gave them a place on the Roth-Malamud-Lethem continuum. The flood of Russian names recently released into American letters includes Gessen and his sister Masha, Vapnyar, Olga Grushin, Anya Ulinich, Irina Reyn, Mark Budman, Sana Krasikov, Sofka Zinovieff, Elena Gorokhova, Ilana Ozernoy, Alina Simone—and the book deals keep coming. At the same time, Russian-born writers began popping up on the other side of the equation, as book reporters and reviewers (Alexander Nazaryan, Leon Neyfakh, this magazine’s Boris Kachka), lit-mag publishers (Keith Gessen again), and agents (Jim Rutman of Sterling Lord). It’s as if there were a whole colony of Russian writers biding their time until the industry deemed them worthy. I’m going to switch from “them” to “us” once again, because I am myself a beneficiary of this development. I published a novel last year. It was blurbed—like Ulinich’s and Vapnyar’s—by Shteyngart.

Each of these groups has found its own watering hole. The art collectors roost at Sant Ambroeus on Madison. The finance crowd took a liking to Mari Vanna on 20th, near Park (the only restaurant in New York that’s actually a franchise of a Russian eatery). The barely-of-drinking-age set descends on Keith McNally’s Pravda, the only Russian-themed spot in town they deem unembarrassing (the nearby KGB Bar and the theater district’s FireBird are inexplicably regarded as “fake”). And assorted oligarchs have discovered the Waverly Inn: On a recent evening, former mining magnate Oleg Baibakov (with a young date) and Alexander Lebedev, the Aeroflot mogul who owns London’s Evening Standard and the Independent, were seen there independent of each other. (Ten years ago, this would have been a clear sign that the spot is toxic. It’s a testament to the Global Russians’ status that it’s not.) Online, groups of Global Russians are forever forming semi-secret societies. A few recent attempts included Nash Krug (Our Circle); CluMBA, catering to Russian banker types (its name means “flower bed” but also puns on both club and MBA); and Baby v Zakone, a female-lawyer group with a name roughly translatable as “Broads in Law.” The Samovar is as close to a clubhouse as this disparate, roving band has, but lately the role of the virtual clubhouse is being assumed by Snob. All sorts of people named in the last several paragraphs either belong to the club, contribute to the magazine, or have been profiled by it.

It was the girls, in a way, that made Mikhail Prokhorov into Russia’s second- richest man. Back home, his reputation as a playboy had been sealed in the mid-aughts. He was known for descending on Moscow’s wildest nightclubs with Gosha Kutsenko, a bald-headed, mildly freakish Russian film star he had befriended, with packs of coltish young things in tow. “It used to be that you go to certain clubs,” recalls one Muscovite, “and if at some moment about fifteen barely legal girls show up all at once, you could tell that Prokhorov is about to stop by.”

In January 2007, partying in Courchevel, he was briefly detained by the French police on suspicion of having flown in a planeful of alleged prostitutes for the party’s guests. Prokhorov was cleared of any wrongdoing, but the incident apparently upset Vladimir Potanin, Prokhorov’s longtime partner in his primary cash cow, Norilsk Nickel. In April 2008, the now-former friends split, and Prokhorov sold his Norilsk shares to another oligarch, Oleg Deripaska. His timing was downright charmed. Less than three months later, the financial crisis hit Russia. When the dust cleared, Norilsk’s stock had dropped 80 percent, Deripaska was $24.6 billion poorer, and Potanin lost a fortune, too. Prokhorov, meanwhile, was sitting on billions in uninvested cash—the best kind of investment in the chaos of late 2008.

Since then, Prokhorov’s interests have varied wildly. He has invested in low-cost hybrid cars, nanotechnology, and banks. He seemingly flirted with the governorship of a far-flung Russian province (Russian governors are appointed by the Kremlin, not elected), establishing tax residence in a tiny Siberian village. In 2009, Russia’s then-richest man paid his income tax—16 billion rubles, or roughly $550 million—out of snowy Yeruda, population 2,300.

Prokhorov’s interest in the Nets appears sincere enough. His father was a Soviet sports official, and Prokhorov is the head of the Russian Biathlon Union (he attended the Vancouver Olympics in that capacity). He played basketball himself in high school—because he was six-eight, it was practically an imperative—and invested in Moscow’s CSKA professional team before turning his attention westward. Prokhorov has already floated a $12 million to $15 million offer to Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, openly plans to court LeBron James and other top free agents, and during his recent visit to the city promised to bring the team a “championship in five years.” He also hopes to raise the sport’s profile back in Russia and perhaps groom future stars there.

And yet buying the Nets and their arena was clearly a real-estate play as well. Prokhorov had already established himself as a major figure in the New York property market before the Atlantic Yards deal. In 2008, after developer Harry Macklowe defaulted on a $513 million loan from Deutsche Bank AG, the super-liquid Prokhorov swooped in and offered to buy the Park Avenue site in question for $250 million. “Guys like Prokhorov,” says a source who’s seen the bid, “are always looking to get in at opportunistic prices. They make extremely low offers that also happen to be all cash, which locals don’t do.” By the time Prokhorov turned his attention to Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards, the project was in almost as much trouble as Macklowe’s. Only the infusion of Russian cash raised it from a coma.

Not all of Prokhorov’s investments can be explained by rational self-interest. Another set of projects invariably bears the hallmark of his older sister, Irina, a patron of arts and literature. In private life, Mikhail and Irina form an unusual, closed-off unit. Until recently, they lived together in a relatively small Moscow apartment, well after Mikhail had become a billionaire. “He’s got one overriding complex,” says a person familiar with both. “He’s not as smart as his sister, and he wants her approval.” Most likely at Irina’s urging, Mikhail has endowed a lavish literary award, a publishing house, an arts festival, and, finally, Snob. “WHAT CAN RUSSIANS do for the rest of the world?”

Gregory Kegeles, Snob ’s director of U.S. business development, wearing wire-rim glasses and a brown corduroy blazer, sips chamomile tea and lets the phrase sink in. We’re at Think Coffee on Mercer, his favorite place in his favorite city.

The pithy question is Kegeles’s idea for the centerpiece of Snob ’s New York marketing campaign, set to hit the city in September. In London, the only place outside Russia where Snob has attempted such a promotional effort, the push was a bit of a disaster. Snob simply bought up billboards in the Underground and elsewhere and slapped Russian-language ads on them, perplexing Brits and embarrassing local Russians. It looked exactly like something a dizzy nouveau riche would do. For New York, Kegeles imagines something that New Yorkers could actually use, something that speaks to Snob’ s globalist brand, and something that shows that the Russians actually understand contemporary New York (and in English this time). A giant video chat, set up right on the street, that lets New Yorkers, Londoners, and Muscovites speak to one another? Sponsoring some benches in the High Line park? Free Nets tickets?

Even by the pre-crash standards of magazine publishing, Snob is an extravagantly well-funded undertaking. Prokhorov financed its launch with $150 million. By comparison, Condé Nast’s Portfolio, the splashiest magazine launch of the last decade, had about $120 million to play with. Snob employs about 120 people and keeps offices in Moscow and London as well as a so-far more modest New York outpost, in a “green” rent-an-office building in Dumbo. The magazine itself might as well be printed on dollar bills: The stock is luscious, the photo stories ripped from the walls of the prestigious Yossi Milo and Yancey Richardson galleries, the editorial purse big enough for pre-U.S.-publication exclusives like a chunk of Nabokov’s The Original of Laura or of Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story, for that matter. Each issue has three covers and comes locked inside a cardboard shell readers are supposed to rip off in a process the magazine’s staff calls “defloration.” U.S. club members get it hand-delivered by DHL.

When Snob ’s creation was announced in 2008, the world assumed it would be a glossy paean to the world’s longest yachts or something, a Slavic striver’s version of the Robb Report with the barest hint of self-awareness in the title. In reality, it was more of a Monocle : a thoughtful, moderately smug house organ of the Global Russian community. snob was actually an acronym of sostoyavshiisya, nezavisimyi, obrazovannyi, blagopoluchnyi (accomplished, independent, educated, thriving). Only the last word of the four hinted at wealth. Lately, under deputy editor Masha Gessen, the project even made a turn toward social activism, battling, for instance, the Putin administration’s revisionist sugarcoating of Joseph Stalin.

The Global Russian “aggressively adopts traits of other cultures without betraying his own. He cooks like a Frenchman, entertains like an American, and forms friendships like a Russian.”

The magazine’s idea was not Prokhorov’s. To hammer it out, he tapped Vladimir Yakovlev, the legendary former editor of the business daily Kommersant and, back in the early nineties, the coiner of the term New Russians, which, Yakovlev tells me, was meant as a compliment, before it came to signify a boor in a burgundy club jacket demanding colder vodka in St. Barts. Yakovlev was fresh off a multiyear stint seeking enlightenment in various exotic locations. His travels seem to have helped him come up with the idea to target the worldwide Russian diaspora as a sophisticated, interconnected demographic. The Global Russian is “a particular breed shaped over the last fifteen years,” says Masha Gessen, from a treadmill, in flawless English (she is the author of four American nonfiction books). “It used to be that when you left Russia, you left forever—to become a proper American, a proper Englishman, etc. The Global Russian aggressively adopts traits of other cultures without betraying his own. Two years ago, when I was writing up a portrait of our imaginary ideal audience member, I wrote that he ‘cooks like a Frenchman, entertains like an American, and forms friendships like a Russian.’ ”

The masterstroke of the original concept was that Snob would simply create this audience as it went along, by pumping money into club members’ own projects: exhibits, films, even mild political activism. Among Russians, even those connected with the project, this largesse bred instant suspicion. Stepan Pachikov, creator of the popular idea- and photo-archiving app Evernote and a member of the club’s New York chapter, sums up the prevailing conspiracy theories: “It’s either a Kremlin initiative designed to get all the liberal opposition types in one place and have them let off steam in controlled conditions, or else it is a multistep strategic game by Prokhorov, who wants to feed and domesticate a certain kind of Establishment to lean on it for support later.”

It’s unclear whether Prokhorov wants to be a media mogul per se; he’s emphatically not interested in competing with any of his Western counterparts or entering the English-language publishing fray. If he wanted to, he’d probably do what Lebedev, the owner of the London Evening Standard and The Independent, did. There are certainly enough distressed media properties to choose from.

But turning a profit—something Snob isn’t likely to do anytime soon—seems far from Prokhorov’s mind (the money expended on Snob, as one New York club member acidly points out, is “just a rounding error” for him). But profit isn’t everything. Prokhorov’s endgame is to buy himself cultural and intellectual credibility on a massive scale and to will into existence, and lead, a group of the globalized world’s Russian-speaking elites.

My own involvement with Snob began in the summer of 2008. The phone rang at an ungodly hour, as it always seems to when Moscow is on the line. “We’re starting a club for distinguished Russians around the world,” said a chipper young woman, “and we immediately thought of contacting you.”

“Oh, wow,” I said, taken aback. “I am really flattered. Wow. No, really.”

The woman held a pause. “Because you seem to know a lot of them,” she concluded. “So we thought you’d make a good New York scout.”

I said something horribly snooty and hung up. Only this seems to have intrigued someone, not put them off, because two months later I was offered membership in the club. In another year, my wife was on the magazine’s staff. By then, Snob had become an inescapable conversation topic in my world. They seemed to have contacted everyone around me at once. Photographers, reporters, fashion designers, advertising people, poets. The weird thing was that they knew everyone. For the first time in who knows how long, Russian New York felt like a legitimate outpost of Moscow, not some sort of fun-house mirror of it. Before long, I had a column on snob.ru , waxing New York–y about things like the High Line and Woody Allen’s latest.

Have I sold out to Prokhorov? Sure I have. And not just by joining his club or working for his magazine. Simply by writing these lines, I’m helping him accomplish his trick by promoting the group he’s so bent on creating. But then I think of that picture of Prokhorov with Mayor Bloomberg and Jay-Z, and it brings to mind a similar photo, one that I apparently committed to memory. It’s a seventies shot of Baryshnikov lolling on a Studio 54 couch, sandwiched between Steve Rubell and Mick Jagger. In most respects, Prokhorov and Baryshnikov couldn’t be more different. But seeing the two Russians flanked by such iconic New York figures had the same effect on me. It’s a bit embarrassing to admit—maybe even a little snobby. But both pictures helped make me feel like I belong in New York, like my life, and those of my countrymen, is bigger somehow than it was back home. Isn’t that why we all seem to end up here?

See Also: A Selective Survey of Russians in New York

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Page Six finds partying Prokhorov on his yacht Palladium

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Remember back in 2010 when “60 Minutes” Steve Croft asked Mikhail Prokhorov the location of his $45 million yacht, Solemar, and he said he didn’t know?! He gets seasick, he told Croft. So he doesn’t use it much. ( We helped him find it)

It was a signature moment in his introduction to the NBA.

Since then, the Nets majority owner has moved up in the yachting world with Palladium, a $230 million number often found plying Mediterranean waters from Izmir to Ibiza. (He’s also moved up in the air, going from a Gulfstream V to an A319 Airbus... as one does.)

Now, Page Six reports the Russian oligarch and Palladium have been spotted “floating around” Palma on the Spanish island of Majorca checking out the King’s Cup sailing regatta.

The Post reports...

The mogul “arrived with a large entourage on his yacht,” said a source, adding, “Russian models were spotted getting off the ship’s dingy.” Prokhorov was seen enthusiastically cheering on the racers.

At the least.

Palladium features a pool, Jacuzzi and private theater. And you can lease the 315-footer and invite 15 of your closest friends to join you.

We didn’t ask about the price.

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Strange Glow Over Moscow Skies Triggers Panic as Explosions Reported

B right flashes lit up the night sky in southern Moscow in the early hours of Thursday morning, new footage appears to show, following reports of an explosion at an electrical substation on the outskirts of the city.

Video snippets circulating on Russian-language Telegram channels show a series of flashes on the horizon of a cloudy night sky, momentarily turning the sky a number of different colors. In a clip shared by Russian outlet MSK1.ru, smoke can be seen rising from a building during the flashes lighting up the scene.

Newsweek was unable to independently verify the details of the video clips, including when and where it was filmed. The Russian Ministry of Emergency situations has been contacted via email.

Several Russian Telegram accounts said early on Thursday that residents of southern Moscow reported an explosion and a fire breaking out at an electrical substation in the Leninsky district, southeast of central Moscow.

Local authorities in the Leninsky district told Russian outlet RBC that the explosion had happened in the village of Molokovo. "All vital facilities are operating as normal," Leninsky district officials told the outlet.

The incident at the substation in Molokovo took place just before 2 a.m. local time, MSK1.ru reported.

Messages published by the ASTRA Telegram account, run by independent Russian journalists, appear to show residents close to the substation panicking as they question the bright flashes in the sky. One local resident describes seeing the bright light before losing access to electricity, with another calling the incident a "nightmare."

More than 10 villages and towns in the southeast of Moscow lost access to electricity, the ASTRA Telegram account also reported. The town of Lytkarino to the southeast of Moscow, lost electricity, wrote the eastern European-based independent outlet, Meduza.

Outages were reported in the southern Domodedovo area of the city, according to another Russian outlet, as well as power failures in western Moscow. Electricity was then restored to the areas, the Strana.ua outlet reported.

The cause of the reported explosion is not known. A Telegram account aggregating news for the Lytkarino area described the incident as "an ordinary accident at a substation."

The MSK1.ru outlet quoted a local resident who speculated that a drone may have been responsible for the explosion, but no other Russian source reported this as a possible cause.

Ukraine has repeatedly targeted Moscow with long-range aerial drones in recent months, including a dramatic wave of strikes in late May.

On Sunday, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said the region's air defense systems had intercepted an aerial drone over the city of Elektrostal, to the east of Moscow. No damage or casualties were reported, he said.

The previous day, Russian air defenses detected and shot down another drone flying over the Bogorodsky district, northeast of central Moscow, Sobyanin said.

There is currently no evidence that an aerial drone was responsible for the reported overnight explosion at the electrical substation in southern Moscow.

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Russia’s TVEL announces managerial changes

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Rosatom' TVEL Fuel Company on 3 August said managers had been replaced at three enterprises. The new leaders will head the enterprises of the machine-building cluster of the Vladimir region - the Kovrov Mechanical Plant (KMZ), the Vladimir Tochmash and Mashinostroitelny Zavod (MSZ) in Elektrostal, Moscow Region.

Anatoly Gavrikov, who previously headed KMZ has been appointed General Director of Tochmash. Gavrikov has been working in the industry for over 15 years and has worked his way up from a leading process engineer of the design and technological department to head KMZ.

Roman Vladimirov, who previously held the position of Deputy General Director for Production at Tochmash, has become the new head of KMZ/ He has worked in the industry for over 20 years and began his career at Tochmash as a design engineer. 

Dmitry Bagdatiev, who had headed Tochmash since 2017, was appointed General Director of MSZ. Under his direct supervision, a sectoral project was implemented to concentrate the production of KMZ and Tochmash at the industrial site in Kovrov. Igor Dar'in, who previously headed MSZ, will continue to work at the enterprise as Deputy General Director.

TVEL President Natalya Nikipelova, introducing the new managers, noted that they are facing large-scale tasks, in particular preparation an increase in the production of gas centrifuges at KMZ, further development and increase in the volume of special-purpose products at Tochmash, as well as the rebalancing of the production at MSZ "due to the increase in the volume of products”.

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Electrostal History and Art Museum

Most Recent: Reviews ordered by most recent publish date in descending order.

Detailed Reviews: Reviews ordered by recency and descriptiveness of user-identified themes such as wait time, length of visit, general tips, and location information.

Electrostal History and Art Museum - All You Need to Know BEFORE You Go (2024)

• (0.19 mi) Elektrostal Hotel
• (1.21 mi) Yakor Hotel
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Rosatom Starts Life Tests of Third-Generation VVER-440 Nuclear Fuel

• 16 June, 2020 / 13:00

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