But everything changed on February 26, when the ship docked at the Spanish island of Mallorca in the Mediterranean.
Ostapchuk saw media reports of a Russian rocket attack on an apartment building in his hometown of Kyiv. It was similar to where he lived with his wife when not on board.
At that point he said, “I think my home may be next.” So he decided to sink the yacht. “That was my first step towards war with Russia.”
In an interview with CNN from Ukraine, Ostapchuk, 55, said he directly linked the destruction in his hometown to the man he calls Lady Anastasia’s owner: Russian oligarch Alexander Mikheev. He is CEO of the Russian arms company Rosoboronexport, which sells everything from helicopters to tanks and missile systems to submarines.
Ostapchuk decided his mission: to sink the Lady Anastasia.
The final phase of Russia’s war against Ukraine had begun two days earlier, with troops from Russia, Belarus and Russia-annexed Crimea attacking. As the offensive unfolded, the US and European Union responded with economic sanctions and the seizure of assets linked to oligarchs close to Vladimir Putin.
And perhaps no fortune so clearly symbolized how Putin’s trailblazers had thrived under his rule, as did the oligarchs’ yachts, some almost as long as the Washington Monument, with helipads, swimming pools and extravagantly opulent interiors.
Ostapchuk said he went to the Lady Anastasia’s engine room, where he opened a valve connected to the ship’s hull. When water got in, he made his way to the crew’s quarters, where he opened another valve.
“Besides me, there were three other crew members on board. I told them the boat was sinking and they had to leave,” he said in Russian.
hide and seek
By most standards, the Lady Anastasia is luxurious with a crew of nine: a master stateroom with a Carrara marble en-suite; cabins for 10 guests; a whirlpool on the sundeck stabilized against the ship’s movements, and so on.
Russian oligarchs own one of the most lavish yachts out there. The Dilbar, a 512-foot yacht, is owned by billionaire Alisher Usmanov, according to the Treasury Department, which identified the Dilbar as “locked property” on March 3. It has two helipads and cabins for dozens of guests. Usmanov did not respond to CNN inquiries about the yacht.
Or take the Amore Vero, a yacht confiscated by French authorities on March 2nd. They say she is linked to Igor Sechin, a sanctioned Russian oil executive and Putin’s ally. (The company that manages the ship denies that it belongs to Sechin.) A former crew member of the yacht, who asked not to be named because he had signed a non-disclosure agreement, said the Amore Vero has one at her lowest level safe space deck.
“It wasn’t even on the official drawings of the boat,” he said. “There was a secret door with a hidden camera. And you could pull the wall away and inside were beds, emergency communications, a bathroom, and CCTV.”
Although officials in various countries have attributed ownership of yachts to Russian oligarchs, the paper trail between ship and owner is usually veiled, running through shell companies and complicated legal structures. Spain, for example, says it has “tentatively detained” yachts while it clarifies ownership.
Mikheev was sanctioned by the US State Department on March 15.
When CNN attempted to contact Mikheev about the Lady Anastasia’s possession, a Rosoboronexport spokesman replied by email that the company “never comments on any information regarding the personal lives of employees and their property, except in cases required by the legislation of the United States.” Russian Federation are required. ”
But Ostapchuk said he had no doubts. “Why, you know, if a creature looks like a dog, barks like a dog, bites like a dog, it’s a dog. Therefore, if over the course of ten years the yacht [was] only used for vacation [by] Mr. Mikheev and his family, then I think he is definitely the true owner of this yacht.”
Amid a growing list of sanctions and seizures, yachts reportedly owned by Russian oligarchs have sped to countries where sanctions are unlikely to be enforced, data from website MarineTraffic shows. Two yachts reportedly belonging to Roman Abramovich, an oligarch and Putin ally who has been sanctioned by the European Union and the United Kingdom, docked in ports in south-west Turkey on Monday and Tuesday. One of the yachts, the Solaris, was docked in Barcelona until early March, while the Eclipse – one of the world’s largest yachts – left the Caribbean and crossed the Atlantic around the same time.
Both ships appeared to bypass EU waters on their way to Turkey, taking a detour that circumnavigated several Greek islands. Despite being a NATO member, Turkey has made it clear that it will not sanction Russia for its aggression against Ukraine. A small group of protesters, waving Ukrainian flags and shouting “No war in Ukraine,” tried to stop the Solaris from docking at a port in Bodrum, Turkey on Monday as the massive yacht loomed overhead. Some of the protesters were members of a junior Ukrainian sailing team that left their country before the invasion to take part in a sailing competition in Turkey, the BBC reported, which also declined to impose sanctions on Russia. The Clio, a yacht reportedly owned by Putin ally and aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska, and the Quantum Blue, reportedly owned by retail billionaire Sergey Galitsky, were both off the coast of Oman this week, MarineTraffic data shows . The Clio listed its destination as Dubai before changing direction to Mumbai, while the Quantum Blue was docked in Monaco before departing in early March. Deripaska was sanctioned by the US and UK, but not Galitsky.
Meanwhile, at least half a dozen other yachts linked to Russian oligarchs have stopped transmitting location data entirely in recent weeks, according to MarineTraffic.
The Galactica Super Nova, a yacht reportedly owned by Russian oil executive Vagit Alekperov, was last recorded sailing out of the port of Tivat, Montenegro, and into the Adriatic Sea early on March 2 – a day after the Montenegrin government announced that she would join the EU in imposing sanctions on Russia. Although Alekperov was not sanctioned, he was included in a US Treasury Department list of Russian oligarchs in 2018. Georgios Hatzimanolis, a spokesman for MarineTraffic, said the most likely explanation for the lack of location data was that the yachts had turned off AIS, an automatic tracking system. International shipping regulations generally require ships as large as oligarch-linked yachts to keep AIS on unless passing through areas known for piracy, Hatzimanolis said. Turning off a transmitter could potentially increase the risk of a collision when ships are navigating busy waters.
“It’s unusual,” Hatzimanolis said of the darkness of the yachts. “But these are unprecedented times for these yachts and their owners. They try to get out of the way and achieve goals where they will not be sanctioned.”
‘You have to choose’
After he began flooding the compartments, Ostapchuk told the other three crew members on board what he had done.
They too are Ukrainians, he said. But fearing he would only cost them their jobs, they yelled at him that he was insane, according to a summary statement accompanying his indictment.
Then they called the port authorities and the police. Dock workers brought in a water pump and kept the boat from sinking. Ostapchuk was arrested.
“I explained to the police that I tried to sink the boat as a political protest against Russian aggression,” he told CNN.
“You have to make a decision. Either you are in Ukraine or you are not. You have to decide, will there be a Ukraine or will you have a job… I don’t need a job if I don’t have Ukraine.”
In some cases, these jobs are at risk anyway. On March 15, Spanish authorities provisionally arrested Lady Anastasia while they assess whether she falls under European sanctions and can be confiscated. It was one of three yachts linked to Russian oligarchs they arrested this week. Others were arrested or imprisoned in France, Germany, Italy and Gibraltar.
On March 7, the company that managed the yacht Dilbar fired all 96 crew members, saying sanctions were preventing the ship from operating normally, according to Forbes.
Sanctions against Russian oligarchs appear to have caused challenges and confusion among some yacht crews. Seafarers’ union Nautilus International held a question-and-answer session with yacht professionals earlier this month and received questions like, “Should we cancel all Russian yachts?” and “What am I entitled to if I am dismissed/dismissed due to sanctions against my ship?” Union officials advised members to review the terms of their contracts.
“They should be held accountable”
When CNN spoke to Ukraine’s Ostapchuk on Wednesday, the conversation was immediately interrupted by a warning of an imminent Russian attack. Later, after Ostapchuk returned from an animal shelter, he said that as soon as Spanish authorities released him on February 27, he returned to Ukraine.
“Now I serve in the army and I hope my service will bring our victory closer,” he said.
He added that he hoped the oligarchs who supported Putin would feel the sanctions.
“They should be held accountable because it is they who, with their behavior, with their lifestyle, with their insatiable greed, have led to exactly this… To distract people from the real plundering of Russia by these rulers, who are waging diversionary wars with others arrange countries that are innocent.”
CNN’s Drew Griffin and Yahya Abou-Ghazala contributed to this report.