Putin’s super-yacht, renamed and off radar since 2022, is spotted sailing past Denmark toward Istanbul
A yacht linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin was spotted off the Danish coast on the evening of Monday, June 29. Danish broadcaster DR reported the sighting, citing vessel-tracking service MarineTraffic. The independent Russian investigative outlet Agentstvo reported that Istanbul is listed as the yacht’s destination.
The Graceful is traveling with a Russian destroyer and the patrol boat Voyevoda. Photographs taken by onlookers from shore confirm the vessel’s identity, and the convoy is also visible in satellite imagery, DR noted.
The outlet reported that the yacht had been off radar since August 30, 2022. After Russia launched its full-scale war against Ukraine, the vessel’s Automatic Identification System (AIS) transponder was switched off.
In October 2022, Forbes reported that the Graceful had been spotted off the Estonian coast, heading toward St. Petersburg. Before that, the vessel had been in Kaliningrad, where it was moved from Germany before the war began. According to journalists, the yacht had been given a new name — Kosatka — and was subsequently spotted in the Baltic Sea, near St. Petersburg.
The 82-meter Graceful is considered the second-largest yacht (after the 140-meter Scheherazade) used by the Russian president. It was previously spotted in Sochi on several occasions when Putin was there. Various estimates put the yacht’s value at between $100 million and $120 million.
In June 2022, the United States imposed sanctions on four yachts linked to the Russian president. The Graceful was among them. A month earlier, the Scheherazade had been detained in Italy’s Tuscany region. Local investigators said the vessel’s owner had ties to Russian authorities. Both yachts had appeared in investigations by Alexei Navalny’s team.
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