Russian nuclear icebreaker Sibir in the Gulf of Finland

Many of the ships of the so-called Russian shadow fleet are not built for difficult ice conditions.

The ice situation is paralyzing Russian foreign trade via the Baltic Sea, Kommersant reported on Monday. The number of available ice-classified ships is limited, as is the availability of icebreakers, according to the Russian newspaper.

The weather forecast is bleak and poses a real threat to shipping," said Alexei Likhachev, CEO of state-owned Rosatom, which owns Sibir, according to state-controlled Tass.

Sibir, with its home port in Murmansk, was, on Wednesday afternoon, at the Liberian-flagged oil tanker Sinbad, which was on its way out of the port of Primorsk in the eastern Gulf of Finland, wrote HBL, citing the site Marinetraffic.