POLAR POLITICSTip of the AIS-berg? Russia’s Antarctic ‘Flying Dutchman’ ship spooks Estonia once moreByTiara Walters

St Petersburg’s infamous south polar vessel has a long history of sailing to the Southern Ocean via Cape Town to conduct mineral resource prospecting. Daily Maverick can now reveal that, according to maritime experts, the ghost of the Karpinsky appears to have haunted a port in the capital, Tallinn, for more than two weeks. The puzzling behaviour of a Russian state seismic survey ship with South African links is confounding maritime trackers in the Baltic Sea — all over again.

TheUS-sanctionedAkademik Alexander Karpinsky, owned by the Kremlin mineral explorer Rosgeo, on Monday, 8 December,reported its locationfrom an Estonian port — which it is banned from entering under EU war sanctions. Monday’s Automatic Identification System (AIS) datareported the ship had now “stopped” somewhere in the Gulf of Finland. Its “matched destination”?

Vene-Balti — a port in the Estonian capital, Tallinn, which it is not allowed to enter because of sanctions imposed in response to Russia’s February 2022 illegal invasion of Ukraine. Marine Traffic noted that the ship had arrived in Vene-Balti on 22 November, but its position had not been received in at least 15 days. It was stationary with a speed of 0 knots.

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To add to this confusing picture, the Karpinsky’s “reported destination” was listed as St Petersburg, Russia. As documented by Daily Maverick’sinvestigative series since 2021, this so-called most controversial of Antarctic survey ships has voyaged to the Southern Ocean almost annually via Cape Town to conduct prospecting expeditions outlawed under the Madrid Protocol. The protocol is the conservation constitution of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty.

Russian state sources have at times described the vessel’s activities as bothgeopoliticaland“legal” science. Remarkably, the Karpinsky had reportedly departed its home port of St Petersburg on 15 June 2025 for its suggested “arrival” at the Estonian port. In other words, a voyage that should have taken the EU/US-banned ship a day or two has now been dragged out across nearly six months.

But the Karpinsky’s “reportedestimated time of arrival” (ETA) — 1 June 2025 — appeared to defy the laws of physics. The Karpinsky, one might say, arrived before leaving — especially since this is a ship whose reputation seems to precede itself.

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