Russian icebreakers could be built in Indian shipyards

Talks continue over the construction of four new Russian Icebreakers in Reliance Naval and Engineering (RNEL) Pipavav and Cochin shipyards (CSL), India, in an agreement which could, bizarrely, put them close to US Naval vessels being dry-docked there.

The vessels will be deployed on the Northern Sea Route (NSR), which is opening up and becoming a viable Asia-Europe sea route for icebreaker accompanied vessels as a result of climate change.

But the relationship is liable to be a fraught one. In April 2024, Cochin’s leadership signed a Master Shipyard Repair Agreement (MSRA) with the US Navy, naming the shipyard as a maintenance and repair hub for US vessels, leaving open the possibility of the yard working on vessels for the US and Russia simultaneously.

The decision by Russia to have some of its icebreakers built in India comes in the wake of NATO-imposed economic sanctions as punishment for the Russo-Ukraine war. Many of the components required to operate icebreakers are now no longer accessible for yards within Russia.

Neither are third-party condition monitoring agreements. A Finnish supplier of azimuth pods for Russian icebreakers recently admitted to Ship Repair Newsletter that all ties had been severed with their Russian customers, meaning that “...we don’t know if they’re still installed, if they’re working – we don’t know anything about them.”