Professor Molchanov to remain under arrest

On 28 October, the Nord-Troms District Court rejected a bid by the Arktikugol trust to have the arrest of the vessel Professor Molchanov lifted.

In early September, the vessel was arrested in the port of Barentsburg, Svalbard, following a request by the Ukraine's Naftogaz Group. Arktikugol subsequently filed a lawsuit in a Norwegian court seeking to have the arrest overturned.

At the hearing, Arktikugol's lawyers argued that the Professor Molchanov plays a vital role in supplying Russia’s settlements on Svalbard, the newspaper Svalbardposten reports. The vessel was scheduled to make a total of ten voyages between mainland Russia and Svalbard this year.

The trust had a charter agreement for the vessel, but it expired on 15 October. As Arktikugol does not own the ship, it has no legal standing to challenge the Norwegian authorities’ decision to arrest it.

The court therefore dismissed the trust’s claims. As the group of Ukrainian companies prevailed in the case, the court also ordered Arktikugol to reimburse their legal costs, amounting to 2,882,000 Norwegian kroner. The trust has two weeks to make the payment.

The District Court also stressed that Russia is the defendant in the original proceedings and that the Russian state ‘has every opportunity to seek the lifting of the interim measures’.

Last week, it emerged that Ukraine’s state-owned energy company Naftogaz had secured court orders to freeze five properties owned by Russia in Oslo. This followed reports that other Russian assets on Svalbard had been seized, including the Russkiy Dom tourist centre in Longyearbyen, 62 snowmobiles and 15 cars.

In 2023, an arbitration tribunal in The Hague ordered Russia to pay Naftogaz $4.2 billion, plus interest and legal costs. The compensation is intended to cover losses suffered by the Ukrainian energy company in Crimea, which was occupied and subsequently illegally annexed by Russia in 2014.