
Icebreaker Festival: Breaking the Ice in St. Petersburg
This May, three mighty ships will steam into the mouth of St. Petersburg’s Neva River and rendezvous with the historic Krasin icebreaker and the curious public at the second annual Icebreaker Festival. Moored across from each other on the English Embankment and the Lieutenant Schmidt Embankment, the four icebreakers can be boarded and inspected by visitors from May 1-3.
The first festival, in 2014, celebrated 150 years from the time when Mikhail Britnev, working at the Kronstadt shipyard, added the first metal hull to an existing ship, Pilot, and created the first icebreaker.
In 2015, three modern icebreakers will join the historic 1916 museum icebreaker Krasin on the banks of the Bolshaya Neva River. They are the diesel-powered Ivan Krusenshtern, built in 1964, and the two Moskva-class diesel-electric icebreakers, the Moskva and the Sankt Petersburg. These two ships, built in St. Petersburg’s Baltisky shipyard in 2009 and 2010, are designed to escort tankers, help with salvage and Arctic rescue operations, clean up spills and fight fires in the increasingly accessible northern shipping lanes.

The Yeseniya was part of last year’s festival in St. Petersburg, Russia
Photo credit: Alfiya Izmailova
(Top photo: The Krasin icebreaker, moored in St. Petersburg, Russia. Photo credit: Alfiya Izmailova)
PUBLISHED: March 26, 2015