In a desperate effort to deliver a power plant to a Russian project in the Arctic before winter arrives, two large Chinese ships, Ocean 28 and Nan Feng Zhi Xing, are slowly making their way through thickening sea ice on the Northern Sea Route. Recently, a fierce storm in the Bering Sea caused delays, allowing more ice to form in the Chukchi Sea, making their journey even harder.
These ships are traveling through broken ice that is about 10-30 cm thick. However, only one of them, Nan Feng Zhi Xing, is equipped with an ice classification, meaning it’s designed to handle icy conditions. On Tuesday, Russian officials closed part of the route to ships without ice-class ratings due to worsening ice conditions. This closure left the two Chinese vessels without the escort of the nuclear icebreaker Sibir, which had been helping ships navigate the icy waters but departed from the area that day.
A Dangerous Precedent
Ocean 28 has become part of a troubling trend: more and more vesse...
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