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$700mn superyacht tied to Putin is being refitted while impounded

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Italy won't say who's paying for the care of a $700 million superyacht tied to Putin

Dustin Jones

The Scheherazade, a 460-foot superyacht, has been held in Italy since May 2022 in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. It is believed to have ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Laura Lezza/Getty Images hide caption

The Scheherazade, a 460-foot superyacht, has been held in Italy since May 2022 in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. It is believed to have ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Scheherazade superyacht was impounded by the Italian government in May 2022 in response to Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Instead of falling into disrepair, Italy has allowed its owner to maintain and refit the vessel, but it won't disclose who is footing the bill.

The Financial Times reported on Sunday that the vessel has been held at port in Marina di Carrara, located almost 90 miles northwest of Florence, since it was impounded by authorities in the spring of 2022. For over a year, the Italian government has permitted the owner to continue paying for the ship's staff, its maintenance and refitting of the vessel. But Italy won't identify the owner.

Italy's Finance Ministry said in a May 2022 news release that the superyacht had "significant economic and business links" with "prominent elements of the Russian government" but didn't name the owner of the ship.

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According to the website SuperYachtFan , the 460-foot superyacht belongs to Russian billionaire Eduard Khudainatov. However, Bloomberg News reported in 2022 that he is a "straw owner" of the superyacht — as well as another ship — and that the Scheherazade actually belongs to Putin.

The Financial Times reported that the Scheherazade has 22 cabins, two helicopter decks and a spa and that it's being refitted by the Italian Sea Group. NPR reached out to the Italian Sea Group for comment but did not hear back before publication.

The United States created Task Force KleptoCapture in the wake of Putin's war against Ukraine, aiming to hold Russian oligarchs accountable for evading sanctions. In its one year of operation, the task force has brought charges to at least 35 individuals and entities, NPR previously reported.

Part of those efforts included seizing luxury items belonging to billionaires with ties to the Kremlin. This includes items like a 348-foot yacht seized in Fiji in May 2022, which is valued at about $300 million and is now sitting in San Diego.

A $700 million superyacht linked to Putin was seized in Italy last year. It's being treated to a refurb while it waits, and authorities won't say who's paying for it.

• Scheherazade, a $700 million superyacht linked to Russian President Putin, is being refitted in Italy.
• Italy seized the yacht in 2022 following sweeping sanctions against Russia over the Ukraine war.
• The unnamed owner of the yacht is paying for the vessel's staff, maintenance, and refit.

A $700 million superyacht linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin is sitting in an Italian port and being refitted on the unnamed owner's dime, the Financial Times reports .

Italy seized the Scheherazade superyacht in  May last year but allowed its unnamed sanctioned owner to continue paying for the vessel's staff, maintenance, and a refit while it sits in the Tuscan port of Marina di Carrara, the FT reported.

The 459-foot, four-year-old vessel features six floors, two helipads, a swimming pool, a beauty salon, and gold-plated bathrooms, reported by the FT and an Insider report .

It's now being refurbished by the Milan-listed Italian Sea Group, which confirmed the refit to the FT. The company declined to provide further details — including ownership — to the media outlet.

People with knowledge of the matter told the FT that the owner of the Scheherazade yacht is Eduard Khudainatov, the sanctioned former CEO of the Russian state oil company Rosneft.

However, the oligarch is merely the "straw owner" of the vessel,  Bloomberg  reported in May last year.

US authorities believe the superyacht could  belong to Putin ,  The New York Times  reported in March last year. 

Two activists working with the imprisoned Putin opponent Alexey Navalny claimed last March that some of the ship's crew members were from a Russian state agency responsible for protecting Putin. The FT reported that the Kremlin denied these allegations.

The Scheherazade is one of the  many luxury assets that have been seized by the West following sweeping sanctions against Russia over the full-scale invasion of Ukraine that started in February 2022. Other yachts linked to Russian oligarchs that have been seized include the $81 million Alfa Nero  and the  $48 million Phi .

The Kremlin and Italian Sea Group did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Insider sent outside regular business hours.

Watch: The rise and fall of Russian oligarchs

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Scheherazade: Giant £570m superyacht ‘owned by Vladimir Putin’ is seized by Italian authorities

The ‘scheherazade’ had been undergoing a refit in tuscany since last september, article bookmarked.

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The Italian government has seized a luxury superyacht worth an estimated £570m that is believed to be linked to Russian president Vladimir Putin .

The vessel was impounded as part of the EU’s sanctions against Russia for its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine , under which similar yachts belonging to Russian oligarchs have been confiscated.

The six-deck Scheherazade had been undergoing repairs in the port of Marina di Carrara in Tuscany since last September. Recent activity at the dockside suggested that the crew were preparing to put the yacht to sea, as calls grew for it to be included in the sanctions.

The Italian finance ministry said in a statement that the owner of the yacht had ties to “prominent elements of the Russian government”, without naming them. US officials have previously told The New York Times that the vessel could belong to Mr Putin, though there has been no official confirmation of this.

Supporters of the imprisoned Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny were also of the belief that the vessel belonged to the Russian president. In a report released in March , an organisation set up by Mr Navalny said it had evidence that the boat belonged to Mr Putin, as several crew members were drawn from Russia’s Federal Protective Service (FSO), which is tasked with protecting the president.

In March, the ship’s British captain, Guy Bennett-Pearce, denied that Mr Putin had ever owned or set foot on the Scheherezade . “I have never seen him. I have never met him,” he told the The New York Times .

Days later, Mr Bennett-Pearce said he had been left with “no choice” but to reveal the owner’s identity to the Italian police, adding: “I have no doubt in my mind whatsoever that this will clear the vessel of all negative rumours and speculations.”

Police boarded the yacht – which is over 450ft long and has two helicopter landing pads – late on Friday to execute the order, the government said.

Officials said they had struggled to identify the real owner of the boat, as it is registered in the Cayman Islands and was built by the German firm Lürssen. The yacht was delivered to its owner in 2020 and can host up to 18 guests and 40 crew, Reuters reported.

Italian authorities said the owner was not on any sanctions lists drawn up by Brussels since Mr Putin’s declaration of war on 24 February, although Rome has asked Brussels to rectify this.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, while addressing the Italian parliament in March, urged the government to impound the yacht as part of the EU’s efforts to put pressure on Mr Putin.

Italy confiscated yachts and villas worth over £770m in March and April from Russian billionaires with close ties to Mr Putin, in a bid to hurt Moscow financially.

Earlier in March, Italy seized a £530m megayacht owned by Russian billionaire Andrey Melnichenko, as oligarchs around the world scrambled to save their yachts and other luxury assets from western governments.

And in April the German authorities seized the world’s largest superyacht, Dilbar , sprawling over 512ft, which belonged to billionaire Alisher Usmanov before he transferred its ownership to his sister.

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Italy impounds $700 million megayacht linked to Putin

ROME — Italian financial authorities said Friday that they have impounded a $700 million megayacht that has been linked in media reports and by anti-Kremlin groups to Russian President Vladimir Putin. But an element of mystery remains: Italy, in what it called its “ freezing decree ,” did not say who the owner might be.

Italian investigators had raced to investigate the vessel and prevent it from leaving the Tuscan port of Marina di Carrara. The yacht, known as the Scheherazade, had been undergoing repairs since before Russia invaded Ukraine. But this week, it returned to the water, according to a New York Times reporter who visited the marina, prompting fears that the vessel might depart and evade sanctions.

The ship, until the measures imposed Friday evening, would have been free to leave.

In announcing its action, Italy’s Finance Ministry said the yacht’s owner had “prominent” links with Russians already under European Union sanctions. The name of the owner was not specified, and Italy said only that its government had asked the E.U. to add the person to its sanctions list.

A spokesman for the Finance Ministry described Italy’s move as “provisional.”

Italy “proposed to the Council of the European Union the inclusion of the owner of the boat in the list,” the spokesman said. “Until then, the name cannot be public.”

In March, an investigation by the Italian daily La Stampa named the boat’s owner as Eduard Khudainatov, a former Russian oil executive. But the newspaper also raised a question about how somebody not listed as a billionaire could afford to purchase one of the world’s most luxurious yachts.

So, speculation about the Scheherazade has only intensified. Investigators working for jailed Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny say the yacht’s owner is Putin himself. In March, Navalny’s team published what it said was the crew list of people who had worked on the yacht. They purportedly include members of the Russian state agency responsible for Putin’s personal protection.

“We think that this is a solid enough proof that Scheherazade belongs to Putin himself and must be immediately seized,” said Maria Pevchikh, the head of the Navalny-founded FBK investigation team.

The assets of Russia’s ruling and billionaire class are generally kept in tight secrecy, controlled on paper through opaque offshore companies. That has made it difficult in some cases for European countries to ascertain the real owners of villas, yachts and other luxury items. The Scheherazade is officially owned by an offshore company from the Marshall Islands, Pevchikh said.

Before Friday, Italy had managed to detain a $560 million megayacht connected to Andrey Melnichenko, a coal and fertilizer tycoon who is one of Russia’s 10 richest people. Italy has also blocked access to villas that oligarchs use as summer getaways.

News | World

Scheherazade: The £500m superyacht in Tuscan port ‘linked to Putin’

The stunning Tuscan port of Marina di Carrara has long been the parking spot of choice for the global elite’s superyachts but there is one vessel that stands out leaving all others in its shade.

The Scheherazade, said to be worth $700m (£528m), complete with two helipads a spa and a swimming pool that can transform into a dancefloor, is under investigation by Italian authorities for potential links to sanctioned Russians - with speculation mounting it could belong to President Putin himself.

The Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky used an address in Italian Parliament on Tuesday to namecheck the Scheherazade and urged politicians to seize the yacht and freeze the assets of sanctioned Russians.

“Don’t be a resort for murderers,” he begged. “Lock all their real estate, accounts and yachts – from the Scheherazade to the smallest ones.”

The Scheherazade contains gold plated toilets and bathroom fittings, a cryotherapy chamber in the spa and six-deck floors - described as being like two apartment blocks stacked on top of each other.

On the upper deck, as former deckhands tol d jailed Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny ’s team, there is a giant living room, dining room, two VIP cabins and a mechanical piano, which plays itself.

The tune is said to be from a famous 2014 song titled ‘Vladimir Putin is a Fine Fellow’.

It flies under the flag of the Cayman Islands, according to the tracking service Marine Traffic , and has been moored in Marina di Carrara since early September after arriving from Montenegro across the Mediterranean.

But even the superyacht ’s British captain Guy Bennett-Pearce’s denials that Putin has anything to do with the luxury vessel, one of the most expensive of its kind in the world, hasn’t dampened down speculation amongst locals and dock workers.

He told The New York Times : “I have never seen him. I have never met him.”

Mr Bennett-Pearce told the publication he could not give further details because of a “watertight” non-disclosure agreement but he insisted the owner was not on any sanctions list.

The team of jailed Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny said in a video on its YouTube channel on March 21 that all crew members, except the captain, are Russian citizens, and many of them are employed by the Federal Protection Service (FSO), the agency responsible for Putin’s personal security.

According to Navalny’s team, the 140-metre long superyacht was made in Germany in 2020.

According to the New York Times, the yacht travelled to the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi twice, once in 2020 and again in 2021. It is known that Putin regularly visits his residence in Sochi.

If the yacht’s connection to Putin is proven, it will be impounded, as Putin is currently under sanctions from the European Union over Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

The name Scheherazade is a girl’s name of Arabic origin meaning “noble lineage“.

Scheherazade - or Sheherazade -is also the name of a legendary Persian queen immortalised as the narrator the One Thousand and One Nights stories that include Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and Aladdin and the Magic Lamp.

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The Russian Crew Aboard a $700 Million Superyacht Possibly Linked to Vladimir Putin Have Abandoned Ship

Crew members abruptly left a coastal town in tuscany, where the yacht "scheherazade" is docked, amid international investigations into the 459-footer's ownership., rachel cormack.

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In the wake of widespread sanctions against Russia and the subsequent seizing of oligarchs’ assets , Russian crew members aboard a $700 million superyacht potentially linked to President Vladimir V. Putin have quit their jobs amid scrutiny of the luxurious 459-footer.

The mysterious vessel in question, which goes by the name of Scheherazade , has sparked a wave of controversy over the past two weeks while dry docked in the port of Marina di Carrara in northern Tuscany as officials struggle to identify the official owner.

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The Russian crew members, however, had been fixtures in the small town since the fall of 2020 when the Lürssen yacht first arrived, as reported by the New York Times . Local union leaders and workers say the crew abruptly left their jobs and the coastal town following international investigations into the yacht’s ownership.

“They were replaced by a British crew,” Paolo Gozzani, the local leader of Italy’s General Confederation of Labor trade union, told the Times on Wednesday. “I don’t know and don’t care whether the yacht is indeed Putin’s or not, but I worry about the repercussions on shipyard workers if police impound or confiscate the vessel.”

Scheherazade will remain in Italy while the investigation to uncover whether it is owned by Russian President Vladimir Putin continues.  Video Still/YT

Scheherazade ’s real ownership appears to be shrouded by various shell companies. This week, though, Russian opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny and his team published a video they say proves the six-decker belongs to Putin or one of his closest associates. That’s based on a 2020 crew manifest which showed a dozen of Scheherazade ’s Russian crew members either worked for or had a connection with Russia’s Federal Protective Service.

US intelligence officials also said this month they had found initial indications that the glitzy superyacht was linked to Putin, but would not describe what information they had.

Captain Guy Bennett-Pearce, meanwhile, told the Times that Putin had no stake in the yacht, but declined to name the owner. Bennett-Pearce has said that he would provide Italian police with documents stating the owner’s name.

Similarly, the Italian Sea Group, which owns the shipyard where Scheherazade is currently docked, said that, based on “checks carried out by relevant authorities,” the yacht is “not attributable to the property of Russian President Vladimir Putin.”

Italy’s finance police, who have been looking into Scheherazade ’s ownership for weeks, told the Times that the investigation was continuing but provided no other details. Until the marine mystery is solved, Scheherazade will stay exactly where she is.

Rachel Cormack is a digital editor at Robb Report. She cut her teeth writing for HuffPost, Concrete Playground, and several other online publications in Australia, before moving to New York at the…

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Putin's alleged $700M superyacht seized in Italy

Zelenskyy pushes for harsher sanctions as the war in ukraine persists.

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Italian officials seized a $700 million luxury yacht with ties to the Russian government , Rome's ministry of finance announced Friday. 

Italian authorities scrambled to investigate the nearly 460-foot superyacht known as the Scheherazade, which was dry-docked in the Tuscan port of Marina di Carrara as concerns mounted the Kremlin-linked vessel would set out to Italian waters shortly. 

RUSSIA MOVES FORCES TO MARIUPOL AHEAD OF 'VICTORY DAY' PARADE, OFFICIALS WORK TO RESCUE TRAPPED TROOPS

The yacht was seized under coordinated measures with the European Union due to Russia's involvement in "undermining or threatening the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine."

The Scheherazade, a 459-foot luxury yacht, is docked at the shipyard in Marina Di Carrara, Italy, March 23, 2022. (Francesco Mazzei/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)

The finance ministry said the vessel, which flew the flag of the Cayman Islands, "had long been under the attention of the authorities."

Despite the acknowledged investigation that found the yacht to have "prominent" links to Russians targeted under EU sanctions, Italian officials omitted the name of the owner of the Scheherazade.

Some reporting has suggested the Scheherazade belongs to Russian President Vladimir Putin, while other reports have pointed to Eduard Khudainatov, a Russian former executive of a state-owned oil company, .

Italy's financial police patrol boat is seen in front of the multimillion-dollar megayacht Scheherazade, which is docked at the Tuscan port of Marina di Carrara, Tuscany, May 6, 2022.  (Federico Scoppa/AFP via Getty Images / Getty Images)

Khudainatov does not appear to have yet been specifically sanctioned, but a decree passed by Italian Finance Minister Daniele Franco barred the vessel from sailing away.

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenksyy specifically referenced the megayacht in a March address to Italy’s parliament in a plea for action.

"Don't be a resort for murderers," he said in a translated address. "Block all their real estate, accounts and yachts — from Scheherazade to the smallest ones. Block the assets of all those who have influence in Russia."

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting with top officials about support to the aviation industry in Russia amid western sanctions via videoconference at the Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow, Russia, March 31, 2022. (Mikhail Klimentyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP / AP Images)

Ukraine has pressed the international community to impose harsher sanctions on Russia as it has continued its deadly war in Ukraine for more than 10 weeks.

The U.S., along with several European nations, have made moves to cut Russian oil ties, while others have pledged to do so by the end of 2022. 

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Zelenskyy slammed EU nations that continue to purchase Russian oil, its No. 1 export.

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"You shouldn’t be a little evil and a little good. It is inadmissible to impose sanctions and with another hand to sign new contracts with Russia. This is definitely inadmissible in times of war. This is hypocrisy," Zelenskyy said during a virtual address to the U.K.’s Royal Institute of International Affairs Chatham House Friday.

Russian Crew of Mystery ‘Putin Yacht’ Just Vanished Overnight in Tuscany

A sudden personnel change, dubious documents, and a potential disaster for the local shipyard hosting the mega yacht Scheherazade at a Tuscan port.

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Federico Scoppa/AFP via Reuters

ROME—For the last two weeks, Russian oligarch watchers have had their eyes on the Scheherazade mega yacht docked in the posh Marina di Carrara in northern Tuscany. There are growing suspicions that the $700 million, six-deck super-luxurious vessel—with its two helicopter pads, various swimming pools, his-and-hers beauty salons and gold fixtures that would make Donald Trump jealous—belongs to Vladimir Putin.

Until two days ago, its Russian crew, led by British captain Guy Bennett Pearce, whose mother t old the Daily Telegraph her son would “never work for a murderer,” didn’t leave the ship. But The Daily Beast has learned that all that changed this week when the Russian crew disappeared overnight, replaced by an entirely British set, who, despite Brexit constraints that would require work visas, seem to have descended out of nowhere.

The crew change caught the attention of Italy’s General Confederation of Labor, which confirmed to The Daily Beast that the Russians are gone. “Yes, they were all Russians until a few days ago,” Paolo Gozzani, secretary of the confederation, told The Daily Beast. “Today the crew is made up entirely of English. We are monitoring the situation inside the shipyards but not because I care whether it is Putin’s or not: I am worried about the repercussions that a seizure, or a freezing of assets, could have on the shipyard workers.”

Italian financial police, who have already confiscated millions of dollars worth of yachts, villas, and bank accounts tied to sanctions against Russia, are working to untangle reams of documents that may or may not link the ship to Putin. Marianna Ferrante, spokesperson for the Italian Sea Group that manages the port, says the ship arrived about a year ago to be refitted. She says it does not belong to Putin—at least not directly.

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But Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny says it does. His research team published a video they say proves the yacht belongs to Vladimir Putin, a sentiment shared by U.S. intelligence officials after The New York Times reported alleged ties to the Russian president.

The area where the Scheherazade—named after a key female character in Middle Eastern tale One Thousand and One Nights —is as close to Little Russia as anywhere in Italy. The port is lined with designer shops and a magnet for Russian tourists who flock to Forte dei Marmi resort, which hosts around 500 Russian “regulars” each summer, according to the local tourist board, which says most have cancelled for the upcoming season. In 2010, the residents petitioned to stop Russians from pushing out the locals, but in the end, the Russian Ruble won out and most of the port workers speak enough Russian to accommodate the numerous Russian yachts that are docked there most of the long Italian summers. The port authority said all the Russian yachts disappeared months before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. All but the Scheherazade, which is currently the only vessel in Italian waters without a distinct owner, according to the Italian Financial police.

Francesco De Pasquale, the mayor of Carrara, has grown weary of the interest in the mega ship. He and the leaders of the Italian Sea Group have issued a joint statement denying Putin is the owner. “According to the documentation available to the company and following what emerged from the checks carried out by the competent authorities, the 140-meter yacht Scheherazade, currently under construction for maintenance activities, is not attributable to the property of Russian President Vladimir Putin,” says the statement, also sent to The Daily Beast.

But the port also conceded that if the Scheherazade were to be seized, it would be disastrous for the port’s 400 workers who have already invested hundreds of hours and materials in the mega yacht refit. “Inside the yard, 400 direct workers and another 200 work in the related industries,” union leader Gazzoni says. “If the yacht, which has been carrying out refitting operations for weeks now, were seized it would be a disaster, an immense impact on the work of the workers; the seizure would freeze a huge area of ​​the construction site, who knows for how long, and would prevent new work from coming in.”

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A 459-Foot Mystery in a Tuscan Port: Is It a Russian’s Superyacht?

As European authorities go after the luxury assets of oligarchs close to Vladimir Putin, a superyacht cloaked in secrecy has come under investigation.

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By Michael Forsythe Gaia Pianigiani and David D. Kirkpatrick

From Germany’s North Sea ports to the French Riviera, open season has been declared on superyachts. Across Europe, authorities are hunting down luxury vessels tied to Russian oligarchs in the effort to inflict pain on President Vladimir V. Putin’s allies.

In Marina di Carrara, a small Italian town on the Tuscan coast, one of the world’s biggest, newest and most expensive superyachts — called the Scheherazade — is under scrutiny by the Italian police. Almost as long as a U.S. guided-missile destroyer, it dominates the waterfront.

The yacht, estimated by the website SuperYachtFan to cost about $700 million, has two helicopter decks and is studded with satellite domes. Inside, photos supplied by a former crew member show, is a swimming pool with a retractable cover that converts to a dance floor. Then there’s the fully equipped gym and the gold-plated fixtures in the bathrooms.

In the rarefied world of the biggest superyachts ( only 14 that are at least 140 meters, or 459 feet long), the Scheherazade is alone in that no likely owner has been publicly identified. That has spurred speculation that it could be a Middle Eastern billionaire or a superconnected Russian — even Mr. Putin.

The ship’s captain, Guy Bennett-Pearce, a British national, denied that Mr. Putin owned or had ever been on the yacht. “I have never seen him. I have never met him,” he said. He added, in a phone interview from the yacht, that its owner was not on any sanctions list. He did not rule out that the person could be Russian, but declined to say more about the owner’s identity, citing a “watertight nondisclosure agreement.”

Captain Bennett-Pearce said that Italian investigators had come aboard on Friday and examined some of the ship’s certification documents. “They are looking hard. They are looking at every aspect,” he said. “This isn’t the local coppers coming down, these are men in dark suits.” A person familiar with the matter, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss it, confirmed that the Italian financial police had opened an inquiry.

On Monday night, Captain Bennett-Pearce said he had “no choice” but to hand over documents revealing the owner’s identity to the Italian authorities. He said he would do so on Tuesday and had been told they would be handled with “confidentiality.”

“I have no doubt in my mind whatsoever that this will clear the vessel of all negative rumors and speculations,” he wrote in a message to a New York Times reporter.

The mystery about the ship’s owner arose because — even for the hyper-confidential world of superyachting — there is an unusual degree of secrecy surrounding this vessel. Not only do contractors and crew members sign nondisclosure agreements, as on many superyachts, but the ship also has a cover to hide its name plate. And when it first arrived at the port, workers erected a tall metallic barrier on the pier to partly obscure the yacht from onlookers. Some locals remarked that they had never seen anything like it for other boats.

In his State of the Union address last week, President Biden announced a Justice Department task force to go after oligarchs close to Mr. Putin and facing sanctions in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Sanctions have been imposed against hundreds of people, and the list keeps growing.

Last week, French authorities seized the yacht Amore Vero near Marseille as it was preparing to depart, claiming it was owned by a man on that list: Igor Sechin, the head of the Russian state-owned oil company Rosneft. In Italy, police in Sanremo impounded Lena, a yacht belonging to Gennady Timchenko, a Putin friend who controls an oil exporting company. In nearby Imperia, police also impounded the Lady M, a yacht belonging to Alexei Mordashov, Russia’s richest man. The fate of the Dilbar, one of the world’s biggest yachts that the United States says belongs to the oligarch Alisher Usmanov, is unclear. It is in Hamburg, and German officials said the vessel could not leave without an export waiver, Bloomberg News reported .

Some of the biggest superyachts are owned by Russians who are not on the sanctions list. The world’s second-largest, Eclipse, which has a missile defense system and a mini submarine, is owned by Roman Abramovich, the billionaire who is selling his ownership stake in the British soccer club Chelsea. Andrey Melnichenko, a billionaire coal baron, owns Sailing Yacht A.

Determining the ownership of assets that the wealthy want to keep hidden is difficult, especially without a warrant, because they are often zealously guarded by private bankers and lawyers and tucked away in opaque shell companies in offshore secrecy havens. The Scheherazade is flagged in the Cayman Islands and its owner, Bielor Assets Ltd. , is registered in the Marshall Islands. The yacht’s management company, which Captain Bennett-Pearce says is also registered in the Cayman Islands, works from the ship and uses his rental villa in nearby Lucca as its address.

One trade website, which bills itself as “the global authority in superyachting,” claims that the vessel’s owner is “known to be a Middle Eastern billionaire.” The Scheherazade shares a name with the female storyteller in “The Arabian Nights,” and it made one brief foray into the Red Sea in September 2020, calling at the Egyptian port of Hurghada. But mostly it stays in Marina di Carrara, where it has been moored since last September.

Locals have their own theory about the ship’s ownership. Some have heard people onboard speaking Russian. And Scheherazade is also the title of a symphonic work by the Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.

“Everybody calls it Putin’s yacht, but nobody knows whose it is,” said Ernesto Rossi, a retired clerk who was taking a walk along the marina’s promenade on Friday. “It’s a rumor that’s been going around for months.”

In Italy, the phrase “Putin’s yacht” has become shorthand for a mysterious and ultra-luxurious ship. It’s also a joke among the dozens of crew members, Captain Bennett-Pearce said. “I’ve heard the same rumors.”

Another, smaller vessel, the Graceful, has long been tied to the Russian president and is known as “Putin’s yacht.” It was tracked leaving Germany for the Russian port of Kaliningrad just weeks before the invasion of Ukraine. (U.S. government officials point out that Mr. Putin owns little outright; many of the luxurious homes or ships he uses are owned by oligarchs.)

Mr. Putin appears to have a penchant for big pleasure boats. During his time as Russia’s leader, he’s been photographed on yachts from Russia’s northern reaches to the Black Sea in the south. Last May, he and Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus, took a cruise on a yacht at the Black Sea resort city of Sochi.

The Scheherazade’s builder, Lurssen Group, whose website promises customers “complete confidentiality,” declined to comment about its ownership. Until June 2020, when the completed ship left the pier in Bremen, Germany, it had the code name “Lightning.” The same company built the even bigger superyacht the Dilbar. A similar gigantic yacht, code-named “Luminance,” is now being built at Lurssen, scheduled to be completed next year.

“Of course, all orders and projects of the Lurssen Group and its subsidiaries are treated in accordance with the applicable laws and regulations,” said Oliver Grun, a company spokesman.

About 70 percent of the Scheherazade’s crew is Russian, Captain Bennett-Pearce said. And during each of the past two summers, it has sailed to Sochi, the last time in early July 2021, according to MarineTraffic, a top maritime analytics provider. The ship’s construction was managed by Imperial Yachts, a company in Monaco that, Reuters reported , manages the Amore Vero, Mr. Sechin’s seized yacht. Nick Flashman, who oversees construction of large vessels at Imperial Yachts, declined to comment.

One former crew member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the nondisclosure agreement, said that shipmates called it “Putin’s yacht.” The person said the ship was manned by an international crew during “boss off” times; when it was “boss on,” the crew was replaced by an all-Russian staff. In the weeks before the Scheherazade’s 2020 trip to the Black Sea, the foreign crew was dismissed, the person said.

The former crew member supplied photos of rosters of both international and Russian crew members. The Times reached out, via social media, phone or email, to at least 17 of them. Few responded.

One of the Russians said only that he had worked on the Scheherazade, citing a nondisclosure agreement. Another person said it would be dangerous to talk. One man denied serving on the vessel; another said he hadn’t worked at sea in 25 years.

Captain Bennett-Pearce said “categorically there is not a European crew that comes on and a Russian crew that comes on.” Many of the ship’s senior officers are from Britain, New Zealand and Spain. Many international crew members were dismissed in 2020, replaced by Russians who didn’t demand the high salaries and benefits that their predecessors had, the captain said. “It came down to economics,” he said.

Given the antipathy that people outside of Russia have toward Mr. Putin, if the Russian president really were the owner or principal user of the yacht, keeping non-Russian senior crew members like him on staff would make no sense, Captain Bennett-Pearce said.

“If there’s a European crew onboard it’s the biggest smoke and mirror and the biggest risk I’ve ever heard of,” he said.

Reporting was contributed by Dmitriy Khavin , Christoph Koettl , Julian E. Barnes , Jason Horowitz , Rebecca R. Ruiz and Eric Schmitt .

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article referred imprecisely to the new task force announced by President Biden in his State of the Union address. He announced a Justice Department task force to pursue and seize the assets of oligarchs associated with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, not a joint task force with partners in Europe, which was previously announced.

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Michael Forsythe is a reporter on the investigations team. He was previously a correspondent in Hong Kong, covering the intersection of money and politics in China. He has also worked at Bloomberg News and is a United States Navy veteran. More about Michael Forsythe

Gaia Pianigiani is a reporter based in Italy for The New York Times.  More about Gaia Pianigiani

David D. Kirkpatrick is an investigative reporter based in New York and the author of “Into the Hands of the Soldiers: Freedom and Chaos in Egypt and the Middle East.“ In 2020 he shared a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on covert Russian interference in other governments and as the Cairo bureau chief from 2011 to 2015 he led coverage of the Arab Spring uprisings. More about David D. Kirkpatrick

Our Coverage of the War in Ukraine

North Korean Missiles:  Despite sanctions, Russia has received new shipments of North Korean Hwasong-11 ballistic missiles , according to a new report. Some of the missiles were used in Ukraine.

U.S. Election Issue:  At the presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, Trump repeated his claim that he can end the war  and refused to say if defending Ukraine was in America’s national security interests.

How Nail Salons Lift Morale:  Paying attention to beauty may seem a trivial concern when the very fate of Ukraine is at stake. But for many Ukrainian women, it is an important ritual of daily life .

A Tug Between Russia and Europe:  A falling-out between former political allies  in Montenegro has complicated the country’s efforts to join the European Union and curb pro-Russian influence.

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Our team of visual journalists analyzes satellite images, photographs , videos and radio transmissions  to independently confirm troop movements and other details.

We monitor and authenticate reports on social media, corroborating these with eyewitness accounts and interviews. Read more about our reporting efforts .

• Places - European, Western and Northern Russia

YEKATERINBURG: FACTORIES, URAL SIGHTS, YELTSIN AND THE WHERE NICHOLAS II WAS KILLED

Sverdlovsk oblast.

Sverdlovsk Oblast is the largest region in the Urals; it lies in the foothills of mountains and contains a monument indicating the border between Europe and Asia. The region covers 194,800 square kilometers (75,200 square miles), is home to about 4.3 million people and has a population density of 22 people per square kilometer. About 83 percent of the population live in urban areas. Yekaterinburg is the capital and largest city, with 1.5 million people. For Russians, the Ural Mountains are closely associated with Pavel Bazhov's tales and known for folk crafts such as Kasli iron sculpture, Tagil painting, and copper embossing. Yekaterinburg is the birthplace of Russia’s iron and steel industry, taking advantage of the large iron deposits in the Ural mountains. The popular Silver Ring of the Urals tourist route starts here.

In the summer you can follow in the tracks of Yermak, climb relatively low Ural mountain peaks and look for boulders seemingly with human faces on them. You can head to the Gemstone Belt of the Ural mountains, which used to house emerald, amethyst and topaz mines. In the winter you can go ice fishing, ski and cross-country ski.

Sverdlovsk Oblast and Yekaterinburg are located near the center of Russia, at the crossroads between Europe and Asia and also the southern and northern parts of Russia. Winters are longer and colder than in western section of European Russia. Snowfalls can be heavy. Winter temperatures occasionally drop as low as - 40 degrees C (-40 degrees F) and the first snow usually falls in October. A heavy winter coat, long underwear and good boots are essential. Snow and ice make the sidewalks very slippery, so footwear with a good grip is important. Since the climate is very dry during the winter months, skin moisturizer plus lip balm are recommended. Be alert for mud on street surfaces when snow cover is melting (April-May). Patches of mud create slippery road conditions.

Yekaterinburg

Yekaterinburg (kilometer 1818 on the Trans-Siberian Railway) is the fourth largest city in Russia, with of 1.5 million and growth rate of about 12 percent, high for Russia. Located in the southern Ural mountains, it was founded by Peter the Great and named after his wife Catherine, it was used by the tsars as a summer retreat and is where tsar Nicholas II and his family were executed and President Boris Yeltsin lived most of his life and began his political career. The city is near the border between Europe and Asia.

Yekaterinburg (also spelled Ekaterinburg) is located on the eastern slope of the Ural Mountains in the headwaters of the Iset and Pyshma Rivers. The Iset runs through the city center. Three ponds — Verkh-Isetsky, Gorodskoy and Nizhne-Isetsky — were created on it. Yekaterinburg has traditionally been a city of mining and was once the center of the mining industry of the Urals and Siberia. Yekaterinburg remains a major center of the Russian armaments industry and is sometimes called the "Pittsburgh of Russia.". A few ornate, pastel mansions and wide boulevards are reminders of the tsarist era. The city is large enough that it has its own Metro system but is characterized mostly by blocky Soviet-era apartment buildings. The city has advanced under President Vladimir Putin and is now one of the fastest growing places in Russia, a country otherwise characterized by population declines

Yekaterinburg is technically an Asian city as it lies 32 kilometers east of the continental divide between Europe and Asia. The unofficial capital of the Urals, a key region in the Russian heartland, it is second only to Moscow in terms of industrial production and capital of Sverdlovsk oblast. Among the important industries are ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, machine building and metalworking, chemical and petrochemicals, construction materials and medical, light and food industries. On top of being home of numerous heavy industries and mining concerns, Yekaterinburg is also a major center for industrial research and development and power engineering as well as home to numerous institutes of higher education, technical training, and scientific research. In addition, Yekaterinburg is the largest railway junction in Russia: the Trans-Siberian Railway passes through it, the southern, northern, western and eastern routes merge in the city.

Accommodation: There are two good and affordable hotels — the 3-star Emerald and Parus hotels — located close to the city's most popular landmarks and main transport interchanges in the center of Yekaterinburg. Room prices start at RUB 1,800 per night.

History of Yekaterinburg

Yekaterinburg was founded in 1723 by Peter the Great and named after his wife Catherine I. It was used by the tsars as a summer retreat but was mainly developed as metalworking and manufacturing center to take advantage of the large deposits of iron and other minerals in the Ural mountains. It is best known to Americans as the place where the last Tsar and his family were murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1918 and near where American U-2 spy plane, piloted by Gary Powers, was shot down in 1960.

Peter the Great recognized the importance of the iron and copper-rich Urals region for Imperial Russia's industrial and military development. In November 1723, he ordered the construction of a fortress factory and an ironworks in the Iset River Valley, which required a dam for its operation. In its early years Yekaterinburg grew rich from gold and other minerals and later coal. The Yekaterinburg gold rush of 1745 created such a huge amount of wealth that one rich baron of that time hosted a wedding party that lasted a year. By the mid-18th century, metallurgical plants had sprung up across the Urals to cast cannons, swords, guns and other weapons to arm Russia’s expansionist ambitions. The Yekaterinburg mint produced most of Russia's coins. Explorations of the Trans-Baikal and Altai regions began here in the 18th century.

Iron, cast iron and copper were the main products. Even though Iron from the region went into the Eiffel Tower, the main plant in Yekaterinburg itself was shut down in 1808. The city still kept going through a mountain factory control system of the Urals. The first railway in the Urals was built here: in 1878, the Yekaterinburg-Perm railway branch connected the province's capital with the factories of the Middle Urals.

In the Soviet era the city was called Sverdlovsk (named after Yakov Sverdlov, the man who organized Nicholas II's execution). During the first five-year plans the city became industrial — old plants were reconstructed, new ones were built. The center of Yekaterinburg was formed to conform to the historical general plan of 1829 but was the layout was adjusted around plants and factories. In the Stalin era the city was a major gulag transhipment center. In World War II, many defense-related industries were moved here. It and the surrounding area were a center of the Soviet Union's military industrial complex. Soviet tanks, missiles and aircraft engines were made in the Urals. During the Cold War era, Yekaterinburg was a center of weapons-grade uranium enrichment and processing, warhead assembly and dismantlement. In 1979, 64 people died when anthrax leaked from a biological weapons facility. Yekaterinburg was a “Closed City” for 40 years during the Cold Soviet era and was not open to foreigners until 1991

In the early post-Soviet era, much like Pittsburgh in the 1970s, Yekaterinburg had a hard struggle d to cope with dramatic economic changes that have made its heavy industries uncompetitive on the world market. Huge defense plants struggled to survive and the city was notorious as an organized crime center in the 1990s, when its hometown boy Boris Yeltsin was President of Russia. By the 2000s, Yekaterinburg’s retail and service was taking off, the defense industry was reviving and it was attracting tech industries and investments related to the Urals’ natural resources. By the 2010s it was vying to host a world exhibition in 2020 (it lost, Dubai won) and it had McDonald’s, Subway, sushi restaurants, and Gucci, Chanel and Armani. There were Bentley and Ferrari dealerships but they closed down

Transportation in Yekaterinburg

Getting There: By Plane: Yekaterinburg is a three-hour flight from Moscow with prices starting at RUB 8,000, or a 3-hour flight from Saint Petersburg starting from RUB 9,422 (direct round-trip flight tickets for one adult passenger). There are also flights from Frankfurt, Istanbul, China and major cities in the former Soviet Union.

By Train: Yekaterinburg is a major stop on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Daily train service is available to Moscow and many other Russian cities.Yekaterinburg is a 32-hour train ride from Moscow (tickets RUB 8,380 and above) or a 36-hour train ride from Saint Petersburg (RUB 10,300 and above). The ticket prices are round trip for a berth in a sleeper compartment for one adult passenger). By Car: a car trip from Moscow to Yekateringburg is 1,787 kilometers long and takes about 18 hours. The road from Saint Petersburg is 2,294 kilometers and takes about 28 hours.

Regional Transport: The region's public transport includes buses and suburban electric trains. Regional trains provide transport to larger cities in the Ural region. Buses depart from Yekaterinburg’s two bus stations: the Southern Bus Station and the Northern Bus Station.

Regional Transport: According the to Association for Safe International Road Travel (ASIRT): “Public transportation is well developed. Overcrowding is common. Fares are low. Service is efficient. Buses are the main form of public transport. Tram network is extensive. Fares are reasonable; service is regular. Trams are heavily used by residents, overcrowding is common. Purchase ticket after boarding. Metro runs from city center to Uralmash, an industrial area south of the city. Metro ends near the main railway station. Fares are inexpensive.

“Traffic is congested in city center. Getting around by car can be difficult. Route taxis (minivans) provide the fastest transport. They generally run on specific routes, but do not have specific stops. Drivers stop where passengers request. Route taxis can be hailed. Travel by bus or trolleybuses may be slow in rush hour. Trams are less affected by traffic jams. Trolley buses (electric buses) cannot run when temperatures drop below freezing.”

Entertainment, Sports and Recreation in Yekaterinburg

The performing arts in Yekaterinburg are first rate. The city has an excellent symphony orchestra, opera and ballet theater, and many other performing arts venues. Tickets are inexpensive. The Yekaterinburg Opera and Ballet Theater is lavishly designed and richly decorated building in the city center of Yekaterinburg. The theater was established in 1912 and building was designed by architect Vladimir Semyonov and inspired by the Vienna Opera House and the Theater of Opera and Ballet in Odessa.

Vaynera Street is a pedestrian only shopping street in city center with restaurants, cafes and some bars. But otherwise Yekaterinburg's nightlife options are limited. There are a handful of expensive Western-style restaurants and bars, none of them that great. Nightclubs serve the city's nouveau riche clientele. Its casinos have closed down. Some of them had links with organized crime. New dance clubs have sprung up that are popular with Yekaterinburg's more affluent youth.

Yekaterinburg's most popular spectator sports are hockey, basketball, and soccer. There are stadiums and arenas that host all three that have fairly cheap tickets. There is an indoor water park and lots of parks and green spaces. The Urals have many lakes, forests and mountains are great for hiking, boating, berry and mushroom hunting, swimming and fishing. Winter sports include cross-country skiing and ice skating. Winter lasts about six months and there’s usually plenty of snow. The nearby Ural Mountains however are not very high and the downhill skiing opportunities are limited..

Sights in Yekaterinburg

Sights in Yekaterinburg include the Museum of City Architecture and Ural Industry, with an old water tower and mineral collection with emeralds. malachite, tourmaline, jasper and other precious stone; Geological Alley, a small park with labeled samples of minerals found in the Urals region; the Ural Geology Museum, which houses an extensive collection of stones, gold and gems from the Urals; a monument marking the border between Europe and Asia; a memorial for gulag victims; and a graveyard with outlandish memorials for slain mafia members.

The Military History Museum houses the remains of the U-2 spy plane shot down in 1960 and locally made tanks and rocket launchers. The fine arts museum contains paintings by some of Russia's 19th-century masters. Also worth a look are the History an Local Studies Museum; the Political History and Youth Museum; and the University and Arboretum. Old wooden houses can be seen around Zatoutstovsya ulitsa and ulitsa Belinskogo. Around the city are wooded parks, lakes and quarries used to harvest a variety of minerals. Weiner Street is the main street of Yekaterinburg. Along it are lovely sculptures and 19th century architecture. Take a walk around the unique Literary Quarter

Plotinka is a local meeting spot, where you will often find street musicians performing. Plotinka can be described as the center of the city's center. This is where Yekaterinburg holds its biggest events: festivals, seasonal fairs, regional holiday celebrations, carnivals and musical fountain shows. There are many museums and open-air exhibitions on Plotinka. Plotinka is named after an actual dam of the city pond located nearby (“plotinka” means “a small dam” in Russian).In November 1723, Peter the Great ordered the construction of an ironworks in the Iset River Valley, which required a dam for its operation. “Iset” can be translated from Finnish as “abundant with fish”. This name was given to the river by the Mansi — the Finno-Ugric people dwelling on the eastern slope of the Northern Urals.

Vysotsky and Iset are skyscrapers that are 188.3 meters and 209 meters high, respectively. Fifty-story-high Iset has been described by locals as the world’s northernmost skyscraper. Before the construction of Iset, Vysotsky was the tallest building of Yekaterinburg and Russia (excluding Moscow). A popular vote has decided to name the skyscraper after the famous Soviet songwriter, singer and actor Vladimir Vysotsky. and the building was opened on November 25, 2011. There is a lookout at the top of the building, and the Vysotsky museum on its second floor. The annual “Vysotsky climb” (1137 steps) is held there, with a prize of RUB 100,000. While Vysotsky serves as an office building, Iset, owned by the Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company, houses 225 premium residential apartments ranging from 80 to 490 square meters in size.

Boris Yeltsin Presidential Center

The Boris Yeltsin Presidential Center (in the city center: ul. Yeltsina, 3) is a non-governmental organization named after the first president of the Russian Federation. The Museum of the First President of Russia as well as his archives are located in the Center. There is also a library, educational and children's centers, and exposition halls. Yeltsin lived most of his life and began his political career in Yekaterinburg. He was born in Butka about 200 kilometers east of Yekaterinburg.

The core of the Center is the Museum. Modern multimedia technologies help animate the documents, photos from the archives, and artifacts. The Yeltsin Museum holds collections of: propaganda posters, leaflets, and photos of the first years of the Soviet regime; portraits and portrait sculptures of members of Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of various years; U.S.S.R. government bonds and other items of the Soviet era; a copy of “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, published in the “Novy Mir” magazine (#11, 1962); perestroika-era editions of books by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Vasily Grossman, and other authors; theater, concert, and cinema posters, programs, and tickets — in short, all of the artifacts of the perestroika era.

The Yeltsin Center opened in 2012. Inside you will also find an art gallery, a bookstore, a gift shop, a food court, concert stages and a theater. There are regular screenings of unique films that you will not find anywhere else. Also operating inside the center, is a scientific exploritorium for children. The center was designed by Boris Bernaskoni. Almost from the its very opening, the Yeltsin Center has been accused by members of different political entities of various ideological crimes. The museum is open Tuesday to Sunday, from 10:00am to 9:00pm.

Where Nicholas II was Executed

On July, 17, 1918, during this reign of terror of the Russian Civil War, former-tsar Nicholas II, his wife, five children (the 13-year-old Alexis, 22-year-old Olga, 19-year-old Maria and 17-year-old Anastasia)the family physician, the cook, maid, and valet were shot to death by a Red Army firing squad in the cellar of the house they were staying at in Yekaterinburg.

Ipatiev House (near Church on the Blood, Ulitsa Libknekhta) was a merchant's house where Nicholas II and his family were executed. The house was demolished in 1977, on the orders of an up and coming communist politician named Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin later said that the destruction of the house was an "act of barbarism" and he had no choice because he had been ordered to do it by the Politburo,

The site is marked with s cross with the photos of the family members and cross bearing their names. A small wooden church was built at the site. It contains paintings of the family. For a while there were seven traditional wooden churches. Mass is given ay noon everyday in an open-air museum. The Church on the Blood — constructed to honor Nicholas II and his family — was built on the part of the site in 1991 and is now a major place of pilgrimage.

Nicholas and his family where killed during the Russian civil war. It is thought the Bolsheviks figured that Nicholas and his family gave the Whites figureheads to rally around and they were better of dead. Even though the death orders were signed Yakov Sverdlov, the assassination was personally ordered by Lenin, who wanted to get them out of sight and out of mind. Trotsky suggested a trial. Lenin nixed the idea, deciding something had to be done about the Romanovs before White troops approached Yekaterinburg. Trotsky later wrote: "The decision was not only expedient but necessary. The severity of he punishment showed everyone that we would continue to fight on mercilessly, stopping at nothing."

Ian Frazier wrote in The New Yorker: “Having read a lot about the end of Tsar Nicholas II and his family and servants, I wanted to see the place in Yekaterinburg where that event occurred. The gloomy quality of this quest depressed Sergei’s spirits, but he drove all over Yekaterinburg searching for the site nonetheless. Whenever he stopped and asked a pedestrian how to get to the house where Nicholas II was murdered, the reaction was a wince. Several people simply walked away. But eventually, after a lot of asking, Sergei found the location. It was on a low ridge near the edge of town, above railroad tracks and the Iset River. The house, known as the Ipatiev House, was no longer standing, and the basement where the actual killings happened had been filled in. I found the blankness of the place sinister and dizzying. It reminded me of an erasure done so determinedly that it had worn a hole through the page. [Source: Ian Frazier, The New Yorker, August 3, 2009, Frazier is author of “Travels in Siberia” (2010)]

“The street next to the site is called Karl Liebknecht Street. A building near where the house used to be had a large green advertisement that said, in English, “LG—Digitally Yours.” On an adjoining lot, a small chapel kept the memory of the Tsar and his family; beneath a pedestal holding an Orthodox cross, peonies and pansies grew. The inscription on the pedestal read, “We go down on our knees, Russia, at the foot of the tsarist cross.”

Books: The Romanovs: The Final Chapter by Robert K. Massie (Random House, 1995); The Fall of the Romanovs by Mark D. Steinberg and Vladimir Khrustalëv (Yale, 1995);

See Separate Article END OF NICHOLAS II factsanddetails.com

Execution of Nicholas II

According to Robert Massie K. Massie, author of Nicholas and Alexandra, Nicholas II and his family were awakened from their bedrooms around midnight and taken to the basement. They were told they were to going to take some photographs of them and were told to stand behind a row of chairs.

Suddenly, a group of 11 Russians and Latvians, each with a revolver, burst into the room with orders to kill a specific person. Yakob Yurovsky, a member of the Soviet executive committee, reportedly shouted "your relatives are continuing to attack the Soviet Union.” After firing, bullets bouncing off gemstones hidden in the corsets of Alexandra and her daughters ricocheted around the room like "a shower of hail," the soldiers said. Those that were still breathing were killed with point black shots to the head.

The three sisters and the maid survived the first round thanks to their gems. They were pressed up against a wall and killed with a second round of bullets. The maid was the only one that survived. She was pursued by the executioners who stabbed her more than 30 times with their bayonets. The still writhing body of Alexis was made still by a kick to the head and two bullets in the ear delivered by Yurovsky himself.

Yurovsky wrote: "When the party entered I told the Romanovs that in view of the fact their relatives continued their offensive against Soviet Russia, the Executive Committee of the Urals Soviet had decided to shoot them. Nicholas turned his back to the detachment and faced his family. Then, as if collecting himself, he turned around, asking, 'What? What?'"

"[I] ordered the detachment to prepare. Its members had been previously instructed whom to shoot and to am directly at the heart to avoid much blood and to end more quickly. Nicholas said no more. he turned again to his family. The others shouted some incoherent exclamations. All this lasted a few seconds. Then commenced the shooting, which went on for two or three minutes. [I] killed Nicholas on the spot."

Nicholas II’s Initial Burial Site in Yekaterinburg

Ganina Yama Monastery (near the village of Koptyaki, 15 kilometers northwest of Yekaterinburg) stands near the three-meter-deep pit where some the remains of Nicholas II and his family were initially buried. The second burial site — where most of the remains were — is in a field known as Porosyonkov (56.9113628°N 60.4954326°E), seven kilometers from Ganina Yama.

On visiting Ganina Yama Monastery, one person posted in Trip Advisor: “We visited this set of churches in a pretty park with Konstantin from Ekaterinburg Guide Centre. He really brought it to life with his extensive knowledge of the history of the events surrounding their terrible end. The story is so moving so unless you speak Russian, it is best to come here with a guide or else you will have no idea of what is what.”

In 1991, the acid-burned remains of Nicholas II and his family were exhumed from a shallow roadside mass grave in a swampy area 12 miles northwest of Yekaterinburg. The remains had been found in 1979 by geologist and amateur archeologist Alexander Avdonin, who kept the location secret out of fear that they would be destroyed by Soviet authorities. The location was disclosed to a magazine by one his fellow discovers.

The original plan was to throw the Romanovs down a mine shaft and disposes of their remains with acid. They were thrown in a mine with some grenades but the mine didn't collapse. They were then carried by horse cart. The vats of acid fell off and broke. When the carriage carrying the bodies broke down it was decided the bury the bodies then and there. The remaining acid was poured on the bones, but most of it was soaked up the ground and the bones largely survived.

After this their pulses were then checked, their faces were crushed to make them unrecognizable and the bodies were wrapped in bed sheets loaded onto a truck. The "whole procedure," Yurovsky said took 20 minutes. One soldiers later bragged than he could "die in peace because he had squeezed the Empress's -------."

The bodies were taken to a forest and stripped, burned with acid and gasoline, and thrown into abandoned mine shafts and buried under railroad ties near a country road near the village of Koptyaki. "The bodies were put in the hole," Yurovsky wrote, "and the faces and all the bodies, generally doused with sulfuric acid, both so they couldn't be recognized and prevent a stink from them rotting...We scattered it with branches and lime, put boards on top and drove over it several times—no traces of the hole remained.

Shortly afterwards, the government in Moscow announced that Nicholas II had been shot because of "a counterrevolutionary conspiracy." There was no immediate word on the other members of the family which gave rise to rumors that other members of the family had escaped. Yekaterinburg was renamed Sverdlov in honor of the man who signed the death orders.

For seven years the remains of Nicholas II, Alexandra, three of their daughters and four servants were stored in polyethylene bags on shelves in the old criminal morgue in Yekaterunburg. On July 17, 1998, Nicholas II and his family and servants who were murdered with him were buried Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg along with the other Romanov tsars, who have been buried there starting with Peter the Great. Nicholas II had a side chapel built for himself at the fortress in 1913 but was buried in a new crypt.

Near Yekaterinburg

Factory-Museum of Iron and Steel Metallurgy (in Niznhy Tagil 80 kilometers north of Yekaterinburg) a museum with old mining equipment made at the site of huge abandoned iron and steel factory. Officially known as the Factory-Museum of the History of the Development of Iron and Steel Metallurgy, it covers an area of 30 hectares and contains a factory founded by the Demidov family in 1725 that specialized mainly in the production of high-quality cast iron and steel. Later, the foundry was renamed after Valerian Kuybyshev, a prominent figure of the Communist Party.

The first Russian factory museum, the unusual museum demonstrates all stages of metallurgy and metal working. There is even a blast furnace and an open-hearth furnace. The display of factory equipment includes bridge crane from 1892) and rolling stock equipment from the 19th-20th centuries. In Niznhy Tagil contains some huge blocks of malachite and

Nizhnyaya Sinyachikha (180 kilometers east-northeast of Yekaterinburg) has an open air architecture museum with log buildings, a stone church and other pre-revolutionary architecture. The village is the creation of Ivan Samoilov, a local activist who loved his village so much he dedicated 40 years of his life to recreating it as the open-air museum of wooden architecture.

The stone Savior Church, a good example of Siberian baroque architecture. The interior and exterior of the church are exhibition spaces of design. The houses are very colorful. In tsarist times, rich villagers hired serfs to paint the walls of their wooden izbas (houses) bright colors. Old neglected buildings from the 17th to 19th centuries have been brought to Nizhnyaya Sinyachikha from all over the Urals. You will see the interior design of the houses and hear stories about traditions and customs of the Ural farmers.

Verkhoturye (330 kilometers road from Yekaterinburg) is the home a 400-year-old monastery that served as 16th century capital of the Urals. Verkhoturye is a small town on the Tura River knows as the Jerusalem of the Urals for its many holy places, churches and monasteries. The town's main landmark is its Kremlin — the smallest in Russia. Pilgrims visit the St. Nicholas Monastery to see the remains of St. Simeon of Verkhoturye, the patron saint of fishermen.

Ural Mountains

Ural Mountains are the traditional dividing line between Europe and Asia and have been a crossroads of Russian history. Stretching from Kazakhstan to the fringes of the Arctic Kara Sea, the Urals lie almost exactly along the 60 degree meridian of longitude and extend for about 2,000 kilometers (1,300 miles) from north to south and varies in width from about 50 kilometers (30 miles) in the north and 160 kilometers (100 miles) the south. At kilometers 1777 on the Trans-Siberian Railway there is white obelisk with "Europe" carved in Russian on one side and "Asia" carved on the other.

The eastern side of the Urals contains a lot of granite and igneous rock. The western side is primarily sandstone and limestones. A number of precious stones can be found in the southern part of the Urals, including emeralds. malachite, tourmaline, jasper and aquamarines. The highest peaks are in the north. Mount Narodnaya is the highest of all but is only 1884 meters (6,184 feet) high. The northern Urals are covered in thick forests and home to relatively few people.

Like the Appalachian Mountains in the eastern United States, the Urals are very old mountains — with rocks and sediments that are hundreds of millions years old — that were one much taller than they are now and have been steadily eroded down over millions of years by weather and other natural processes to their current size. According to Encyclopedia Britannica: “The rock composition helps shape the topography: the high ranges and low, broad-topped ridges consist of quartzites, schists, and gabbro, all weather-resistant. Buttes are frequent, and there are north–south troughs of limestone, nearly all containing river valleys. Karst topography is highly developed on the western slopes of the Urals, with many caves, basins, and underground streams. The eastern slopes, on the other hand, have fewer karst formations; instead, rocky outliers rise above the flattened surfaces. Broad foothills, reduced to peneplain, adjoin the Central and Southern Urals on the east.

“The Urals date from the structural upheavals of the Hercynian orogeny (about 250 million years ago). About 280 million years ago there arose a high mountainous region, which was eroded to a peneplain. Alpine folding resulted in new mountains, the most marked upheaval being that of the Nether-Polar Urals...The western slope of the Urals is composed of middle Paleozoic sedimentary rocks (sandstones and limestones) that are about 350 million years old. In many places it descends in terraces to the Cis-Ural depression (west of the Urals), to which much of the eroded matter was carried during the late Paleozoic (about 300 million years ago). Found there are widespread karst (a starkly eroded limestone region) and gypsum, with large caverns and subterranean streams. On the eastern slope, volcanic layers alternate with sedimentary strata, all dating from middle Paleozoic times.”

Southern Urals

The southern Urals are characterized by grassy slopes and fertile valleys. The middle Urals are a rolling platform that barely rises above 300 meters (1,000 feet). This region is rich in minerals and has been heavily industrialized. This is where you can find Yekaterinburg (formally Sverdlovsk), the largest city in the Urals.

Most of the Southern Urals are is covered with forests, with 50 percent of that pine-woods, 44 percent birch woods, and the rest are deciduous aspen and alder forests. In the north, typical taiga forests are the norm. There are patches of herbal-poaceous steppes, northem sphagnous marshes and bushy steppes, light birch forests and shady riparian forests, tall-grass mountainous meadows, lowland ling marshes and stony placers with lichen stains. In some places there are no large areas of homogeneous forests, rather they are forests with numerous glades and meadows of different size.

In the Ilmensky Mountains Reserve in the Southern Urals, scientists counted 927 vascular plants (50 relicts, 23 endemic species), about 140 moss species, 483 algae species and 566 mushroom species. Among the species included into the Red Book of Russia are feather grass, downy-leaved feather grass, Zalessky feather grass, moccasin flower, ladies'-slipper, neottianthe cucullata, Baltic orchis, fen orchis, helmeted orchis, dark-winged orchis, Gelma sandwart, Krasheninnikov sandwart, Clare astragalus.

The fauna of the vertebrate animals in the Reserve includes 19 fish, 5 amphibian and 5 reptile. Among the 48 mammal species are elks, roe deer, boars, foxes, wolves, lynxes, badgers, common weasels, least weasels, forest ferrets, Siberian striped weasel, common marten, American mink. Squirrels, beavers, muskrats, hares, dibblers, moles, hedgehogs, voles are quite common, as well as chiropterans: pond bat, water bat, Brandt's bat, whiskered bat, northern bat, long-eared bat, parti-coloured bat, Nathusius' pipistrelle. The 174 bird bird species include white-tailed eagles, honey hawks, boreal owls, gnome owls, hawk owls, tawny owls, common scoters, cuckoos, wookcocks, common grouses, wood grouses, hazel grouses, common partridges, shrikes, goldenmountain thrushes, black- throated loons and others.

Activities and Places in the Ural Mountains

The Urals possess beautiful natural scenery that can be accessed from Yekaterinburg with a rent-a-car, hired taxi and tour. Travel agencies arrange rafting, kayaking and hiking trips. Hikes are available in the taiga forest and the Urals. Trips often include walks through the taiga to small lakes and hikes into the mountains and excursions to collect mushrooms and berries and climb in underground caves. Mellow rafting is offered in a relatively calm six kilometer section of the River Serga. In the winter visitor can enjoy cross-mountains skiing, downhill skiing, ice fishing, dog sledding, snow-shoeing and winter hiking through the forest to a cave covered with ice crystals.

Lake Shartash (10 kilometers from Yekaterinburg) is where the first Ural gold was found, setting in motion the Yekaterinburg gold rush of 1745, which created so much wealth one rich baron of that time hosted a wedding party that lasted a year. The area around Shartash Lake is a favorite picnic and barbecue spot of the locals. Getting There: by bus route No. 50, 054 or 54, with a transfer to suburban commuter bus route No. 112, 120 or 121 (the whole trip takes about an hour), or by car (10 kilometers drive from the city center, 40 minutes).

Revun Rapids (90 kilometers road from Yekaterinburg near Beklenishcheva village) is a popular white water rafting places On the nearby cliffs you can see the remains of a mysterious petroglyph from the Paleolithic period. Along the steep banks, you may notice the dark entrance of Smolinskaya Cave. There are legends of a sorceress who lived in there. The rocks at the riverside are suited for competitive rock climbers and beginners. Climbing hooks and rings are hammered into rocks. The most fun rafting is generally in May and June.

Olenii Ruchii National Park (100 kilometers west of Yekaterinburg) is the most popular nature park in Sverdlovsk Oblast and popular weekend getaway for Yekaterinburg residents. Visitors are attracted by the beautiful forests, the crystal clear Serga River and picturesque rocks caves. There are some easy hiking routes: the six-kilometer Lesser Ring and the 15-kilometer Greater Ring. Another route extends for 18 km and passes by the Mitkinsky Mine, which operated in the 18th-19th centuries. It's a kind of an open-air museum — you can still view mining an enrichment equipment here. There is also a genuine beaver dam nearby.

Among the other attractions at Olenii Ruchii are Druzhba (Friendship) Cave, with passages that extend for about 500 meters; Dyrovaty Kamen (Holed Stone), created over time by water of Serga River eroding rock; and Utoplennik (Drowned Man), where you can see “The Angel of Sole Hope”., created by the Swedish artist Lehna Edwall, who has placed seven angels figures in different parts of the world to “embrace the planet, protecting it from fear, despair, and disasters.”

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Federal Agency for Tourism of the Russian Federation (official Russia tourism website russiatourism.ru ), Russian government websites, UNESCO, Wikipedia, Lonely Planet guides, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, National Geographic, The New Yorker, Bloomberg, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Yomiuri Shimbun and various books and other publications.

Updated in September 2020

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Photo	Title	Review
		Ekaterinburg map: hotels and city highlights. Following map fragment sketches out Ekaterinburg city center. Verkh-Isetsky pond dam, Historical Square, Ekaterinburg City Hall, 1905 Square are considered to be very downtown of Ekaterinburg. Ekaterinburg map also points places of interest, museums, monuments, squares, churches and theatres. One can also find a hotel and make hotel's reservation online. Use scrolling to browse through the map. Click the point and learn more about the place you are interested in. If you have any questions about hotel or apartment's location, feel free to contact UralTerra.com manager
		The Map of Europe and Asia continent. Ekaterinburg travel company UralTerra.com presents! You can see the Ekaterinburg location on the following Europe map. See Ekaterinburg Map before travel to Russia. Find out Where to go and Who to go With.
		Know more about Ekaterinburg location, foundation, ekaterinburg population, religion, Ekaterinburg climat, industry, economics and finances, transportation. Learn about international relationship in Ekaterinburg, Russia before travel. You can find many useful details about the capital of Ural Region -Ekaterinburg.
		Ekaterinburg of Sverdlovsk Oblast is considered to be the third capital of Russia due to such factors as geographical position, developed economics and industry. is the most important city of the Urals. It is an administrative, transport, commercial, trading, scientific and cultural centre. Besides, it is the regional centre of Sverdlovsk Region. Ekaterinburg borders with Khantia-Mansia Okrug on the North, Tyumen Region on the South-East, Kurgan and Chelyabinsk Regions on the South, perm Region on the West.
		In the first half of the 18th century, in Russia, the necessity in the united, centralized administration of all Ural plants appeared. The administrative centre of mining industry had to be focused in a large city. This city had to combine management function, metallurgical industry, and play the role of trading Russian-Siberian intermediary.
		The first half of the 19th century is the period of intensive development of pre-revolutionary Ekaterinburg. Ekaterinburg became the centre of all Ural industry.
		At the beginning of 20th century, light and food industry were developing. Large financial intermediaries, such as Siberian Trading Bank, Volgsko-Kamsky Bank, brunches of Russian Foreign Trade Bank and Russian-Asian Bank were open. Railway system was also developing. These facts caused activity on the city�s market. Population of Ekaterinburg increased. In 1897, it was 42,2 thousand people and in 1917 it was 71,5 thousand people already.
		is considered to be the 3d capital of Russia. Its status is confirmed by its multifunctionality. It combines material, economic parts of city's life (such as industry, science, trade, transport) as well as cultural ones. All this provides constant development of the city.
		Several basic factors determine the climates of Ekateriburg. The city�s size and compact shape produce a dominance of continental regimes. In fact there are only two seasons, winter and summer; spring and autumn are brief periods of rapid change from one extreme to other.
		Russia is a country with a vast territory. plays an important role as it forms country's appearance. Ural region spreads over the Ural Mountains, western and eastern parts near the Ural Mountains and the great part of the Western Siberian Plane. The region's territory extends 1,3 thousand km along meridian and 1 thousand km along latitude. Its length is about 195 thousand square km. Thus Ural region occupies about 1,2 % territory of Russian Federation.
		Territory of stretches for 500 km from mountain Kosvin Stone (59� 30' n. lat.) in the South to mountain Telposiz (64� n. lat.) in the North. The total territory is about 90000 square kilometers. The North Ural is situated in taiga. It is covered with forests and boggy lowlands. territory is about 143,6 thousand square km. It stretches 550 km from north to south and 450 km from west to east.
		combines peculiarities of both the North and the South Urals. The heart of the Middle Ural is the city Ekaterinburg, the capital of Ural region. Ekaterinburg is situated in the very centre of the vast Eurasian continent, in that part of the Ural Mountains, which is considered to be a natural boundary between Europe and Asia
		Sverdlovsk region Map is available here. Sverdlovsk region (or Oblast) is a part of the Ural Federal District. You will see cities of Sverdlovsk region and its capital Ekaterinburg location. You will also see neighbor regions which are next to Sverdlovsk region. Find location of Sverdlovsk region cities and towns - Alapaevsk, Kamensk-Uralsky, Krasnoufimsk, Nezhny Tagil, Serov, Pervouralsk, Polevskoy, Sysert and etc. Map is only 250 Kb.
		Status: Region (oblast) Capital: Ekaterinburg (Yekaterinburg). Former name Sverdlovsk (1924-1991) Sverdlovsk Region has 30 areas and 47 towns. More over Sverdlovsk Oblast is divided into 6 smaller regions (okrugs). The main city of Sverdlovsk Region is Ekaterinburg. Ekaterinburg and other big cities around it form Ekaterinburg agglomeration. Ekaterinburg agglomeration consists of the following cities: Kamensk-Uralsky (200 000 people), Pervouralsk (165 000 people), Asbest, Revda, Sredneuralsk, Sysert, Rezh, Irbit and others.
		Regions (oblasts): Kurgan Region, Sverdlovsk Region, Tyumen Region, Chelyabinsk Region. Autonomous Okrugs: Khantia-Mansia, Yamalia. Main cities: Ekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk, Kurgan, Izhevsk, Nizhny Tagil, Magnitogorsk, Serov, Zlatoust, Miass, Sterlitamak, Salavat, Pervouralsk, Kamensk-Uralsky, Orsk, Lisva, Kizel.

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