magellan tour 2023

Our homage to Magellan's original Voyage of Discovery

The Magellan Odyssey – What to Expect

June 30, 2021

In 1519, Portuguese explorer, Ferdinand Magellan set sail from Spain with a fleet of five ships to discover a western sea route to the Spice Islands. His journey was daring and ambitious, taking almost three years to return to port. En route, he discovered the “Strait of Magellan” and became the first European to cross the Pacific Ocean. His explorations are historically significant and proved that the world was not only much larger than we had previously imagined but also that it could be circumnavigated by sea.

Magellan’s expedition inspired our own world Odyssey and in celebration of our 10-year anniversary, we have curated a journey that is a modern interpretation of this original voyage of discovery.

Named for this intrepid explorer, the Magellan Odyssey is Art in Voyage’s homage to travel, and we are excited to announce that we have confirmed our departure for 2023! Designed with top-class experiences in mind, this once-in-a-lifetime travel event will introduce guests to a world of new adventures spanning 5 continents and 10 countries over 28 days.

Our Inspiration

“This is a project dear to our heart – one that comes from 10 years of developing unique themed journeys around the world,” says CEO of Art in Voyage, Mikael Audebert. “We could not have thought of a better time than our 10-year anniversary to bring our world tour vision to life. As such, we are excited to provide guests from around the globe with a chance to check off many items on their bucket list – with just one trip.

Take a Step Inside our Odyssey - Explore What’s in Store!

“In developing the itinerary for the tour, we carefully studied the type of destinations guests would normally not visit on their own, either because of the remote location or simply because of the difficulty in justifying an entire week there,” Audebert states.

“We could have included the usual suspects, like Paris, Tuscany and the likes of Thailand. Instead, we have gone beyond the norms to ensure each of our stops provides a unique experience for all participants.”

An Unrivaled View of Peru

After a short flight south from our meeting point in the United States, we make our first stop of the World Tour in Peru!

Sightseeing takes on new heights as we journey from Arequipa to Cusco onboard the lavish Belmond Andean Explorer train. Traversing one of the highest train routes ever constructed, this meandering path offers guests a chance to immerse themselves in the wonderful scenery of this historic countryside.

Stargazing in the Atacama Desert

Next stop, Chile!

Touchdown in the world’s driest desert for an evening of unparalleled stargazing amidst a scene of golden sand dunes and glimmering salt pans.

Here, you will be immersing yourself in what can be described as an ancient land, filled with stunning views of desert landscapes, mountains and so much more! With the ultimate luxury escape, this will be a massive tick on your bucket list.

Bouncing around the Bush in Tanzania

For our third leg of the Magellan Odyssey , we will be taking a trip over to Africa, where Tanzania will play host to the Great Migration!

For 3 days and 3 nights, witness the incredible force and beauty of nature of Tanzania’s oldest game reserve. Marvel at the majestic wildlife that abounds in nature’s original playground as you enjoy enjoying luxurious pampering in the heart of the Serengeti.

From a massage under the trees overlooking a watering hole, to dinner under the stars paired with a delicious wine – could there be a better way to living this dream?

Ancient Archaeology by Candlelight in Jordan

After a quick flight from Tanzania, we welcome you to Jordan!

History and culture unite in the ancient city of Petra, Jordan where a candlelit walk through the mountains delivers you to a private dinner on the archaeological site, Little Petra.

From 5-star accommodation, spa experiences second to none and an entirely new type of culture to step into, this promises to be a truly spectacular stop on our adventures across the globe.

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Wined and Dined in Bordeaux

Next, we hop over to Europe for our stop in the Bordeaux Wine Region of France.

Luxury and leisure combine as we indulge in the delights of this area that is best known for its cheese and wine. On this leg of our travels, guests will be wined and dined at three prestigious wine estates, sampling the best food and wine that this area has to offer. Once here, guests will also have access to a selection of vintage cars that can be utilized for sunny escapes into the countryside at their leisure.

The Magical and Mystical Lapland

Its time to head to our most northern destination from France, and experience a true winter wonderland – Lapland!

Finnish Lapland is a quintessential winter wonderland. Husky farms, snowmobiles and sleigh rides are just a few of the delights on offer in this region full of contrasts and Christmassy cheer. Bundled up against the cold, our days will be filled with fun forays into the snow, gingerbread master classes and immersion into Finnish culture and history. Join us fireside for engaging conversations and excellent food and wine.

Reset and Reconnect in Bhutan

From Europe, our journey takes us on to Asia, and our seventh stop – Bhutan!

Step back in time, and slide into a whole new world filled with culture, history and beauty – not to mention amazing food! Staying in luxury, guests will be welcomed to a spectacular hotel built on the riverbank, with stunning views all around!

Over three days of reflection and renewal, you will be fully immersed in the ancient traditions of Bhutan. Crafting a deeply personal experience with our concierge team, this is a time to rediscover the meaning of life.

This is arguably one of the most spiritual places on Earth and you will leave Bhutan with renewed vigor and a deeper appreciation for life, the people and the planet.

Explore the Fertile Forests of Thailand

As we bid Bhutan a fond farewell, we head off to the fertile forests of Chiang Rai, Thailand.

Pick and choose your daily itinerary from an array of diverse activities contained within the heart the jungle. Boat rides, cooking classes and temple tours are just some of the delights you can explore at your leisure.

Wilderness Adventures in New Zealand

For the penultimate leg of our Odyssey , we are giving you the choice of experiencing the majesty of New Zealand, in your own way. Create your own experience in this location, choosing to explore Taupo on the North Island or Milford Sound and Waiheke towards the South.

Glaciers and fiords adorn the mainland of this picturesque island setting that is as scenic as it is friendly. New Zealand provides guests with a comforting mixture of nature, wildlife and lavish food and wine.

An Island Utopia in French Polynesia

Peace and tranquility are the buzzwords for this final leg of your world travel event and on our final stop we head to French Polynesia and the islands of Bora Bora.

Surrounded by azure oceans and lush, tropical slopes, this romantic paradise will revive your soul and cement the memories of your time spent exploring the world with us!

Confirmed Departure 2023!

There is no better time to see the world and uncover the many perfect places that make this planet so rich and fascinating. Our Odyssey departs March 04, 2023 and it is with great excitement that invite you to join us!

Step out of your comfort zone and awaken your zest for travel in 2023.

Can you afford not to go?

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Tour replica of Magellan’s Nao Trinidad at Hudson River Maritime Museum through October 8 

This week marks the 504 th anniversary of the departure from Spain of the expedition led by Ferdinand Magellan that first circumnavigated the globe. The three-year voyage was beset by one disaster after another, including multiple mutinies, starvation, scurvy, violent clashes with indigenous people in the lands they visited and deadly storms. Magellan himself only made it as far as the Philippines before being killed in battle by Mactan warriors who were resisting forcible conversion to Christianity. Of the five ships that started out, only one made it all the way around the world, with only 18 survivors out of the original 270 men on board.

In 2018, the Nao Victoria Foundation completed the 14-year construction of a replica of the Trinidad , Magellan’s capitana or flagship, the original of which was destroyed by a storm in Tinate in the Molucca islands in 1522, after having been seized by the Portuguese. On Monday, September 18, the Nao Trinidad arrived at the Rondout waterfront in Kingston, where it will remain docked at the Hudson River Maritime Museum and open to the public for deck tours through October 8. Built of iroko and pine, the ship weighs 200 tons, measures 29 meters long and 8 meters wide, with four masts, five sails and five decks. Visitors have access to most sections of the ship, whose exhibits and interpretive materials provide a grounding in the expedition’s hair-raising history.

King Charles and his advisors wanted to establish exactly where the “antimeridian” of the Tordesillas meridian was located, dividing the globe into two hemispheres. In particular, they wanted to know which dominant naval power could legally lay claim to the Moluccas, according to the treaty. (In 1529, seven years after Magellan’s death, the Treaty of Zaragoza ceded the spice-rich archipelago to Portugal; Spain got a hefty cash settlement out of the deal.) To resolve the geographical dispute, the Spaniards needed documentation of the distance around the world.

One ship, the San Antonio , actually deserted the expedition in the middle of the Strait of Magellan, turning tail and heading back to Spain instead of showing up at a designated rendezvous point. Another, the Santiago , had already been wrecked by a storm on the coast of Patagonia. Following Magellan’s death, and a subsequent massacre of 27 of his crew on the island of Cebu, the Concepción was deliberately scuttled in the Philippines; battle, starvation and scurvy had killed too many of the sailors to manage all three remaining ships.

Tickets may be purchased online at www.hrmm.org/naotrinidad or in person at the docks. Purchasing advance tickets online is strongly recommended.  

Frances Marion Platt

Frances Marion Platt has been a feature writer (and copyeditor) for Ulster Publishing since 1994, under both her own name and the nom de plume Zhemyna Jurate. Her reporting beats include Gardiner and Rosendale, the arts and a bit of local history. In 2011 she took up Syd M’s mantle as film reviewer for Alm@nac Weekly, and she hopes to return to doing more of that as HV1 recovers from the shock of COVID-19. A Queens native, Platt moved to New Paltz in 1971 to earn a BA in English and minor in Linguistics at SUNY. Her first writing/editing gig was with the Ulster County Artist magazine. In the 1980s she was assistant editor of The Independent Film and Video Monthly for five years, attended Heartwood Owner/Builder School, designed and built a timberframe house in Gardiner. Her son Evan Pallor was born in 1995. Alternating with her journalism career, she spent many years doing development work – mainly grantwriting – for a variety of not-for-profit organizations, including six years at Scenic Hudson. She currently lives in Kingston.

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Beim Radfahren Spaß haben und dabei noch etwas Gutes tun – das ist die Grundidee der tour de magellan.

Ob auf Trainingsfahrten oder im Renneinsatz: Radsport verkörpert Teamgeist, Emotion, Dynamik, Fleiß und Willenskraft. Für diese Attribute steht auch die fernao magellan GmbH. Mit der tour de magellan setzt das Unternehmen ein Zeichen für gesellschaftliches Engagement.

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Ab aufs Rad!

Der Spaß steht bei den mehr als 100 zu fahrenden Kilometern im Fokus aller Teilnehmer. Genieße die Strecke durch Köln mit Etappen am Rhein und Blick auf den Dom.

Ihr radelt, wir spenden!

Pro Fahrer und gefahrenen Kilometer spendet die fernao magellan GmbH 1 € an die aufgeführten, gemeinnützigen Organisationen . Ihr tragt direkt dazu bei!

Bisherige Spenden

Jede tour de magellan hat prominente gesichter.

Bei jeder tour de magellan laden wir neue prominente Gesichter ein. Während der Tour und auf unserer Abendveranstaltung im Anschluss zur Tour, habt ihr die Möglichkeit mit allen Teilnehmern in Kontakt zu treten.

Hast du einen Wunsch, wer uns auf der nächsten tour de magellan begleiten soll? Dann markiere doch uns und deinen Wunschkandidaten auf Instagram.

• Elmar Sprink

Mit neuem Herz zurück ins alte Leben! Mit einem transplantierten Herzen Sport treiben? Diese Vorstellung halten viele Menschen für Unmöglich. Aber Elmar Sprink beweist uns das Gegenteil. Der aktive und sehr erfolgreiche Triathlet erlitt vor einigen Jahren einen Herzstillstand. Zwei Jahre später die erlösende Nachricht, dass ein Spenderherz gefunden wurde. Von da an ging es bergauf, er nimmt an immer mehr Wettkämpfen teil und absolvierte ebenfalls erfolgreich den Ironman in Frankfurt.

• Julius Brink

Olympiasieger Beachvolleyball

Olympiasieger, Weltmeister, dreifacher Europameister, fünfmaliger deutscher Meister – Julius Brink gehört zu den erfolgreichsten deutschen Beachvolleyballern aller Zeiten. Seine erfolgreichste Zeit feierte der Wahl-Kölner von 2009 bis 2012 gemeinsam mit seinem Spielpartner Jonas Reckermann. Seit 2014 befindet sich der Beachvolleyball-Star nun im Profisportler-Ruhestand und genießt seine neu gewonnene Freiheit unter anderem durch das Ausprobieren diverser Sportarten - könnte der Radsport zur neuen Sport-Liebe werden?

• Fabian Wegmann

ehemaliger Radsportprofi

Fabian Wegmann ist ein ehemaliger Radprofi. Fabian fuhr von 2002-2016 für einige renommierte Radrennteams, darunter das Team Gerolsteiner und das Team Milram. Zu seinen wichtigsten Erfolgen zählen die Deutsche Meisterschaft 2007, 2008 und 2012. Außerdem war Fabian 2004 als erster Deutscher überhaupt Gewinner des Grünen Trikots als bester Bergfahrer beim Giro d´Italia. Nach seiner aktiven Karriere wird Fabian Wegmann in Zukunft als Werbebotschafter für den „Sparkassen Münsterland Giro“ tätig sein und die Rennleitung des Profirennens übernehmen. Zusätzlich ist er Streckenplaner bei der Deutschland Tour.

• Ulrike Nasse-Meyfarth

zweifache Olympiasiegerin Hochsprung

Ulrike Nasse-Meyfarth ist Mitglied in der Hall of Fame des deutschen Sports und als zweifache Olympiasiegerin (1972 als 16-Jährige in München und 1984 in Los Angeles) im Hochsprung eine der erfolgreichsten deutschen Leichtathletinnen. Keiner anderen Leichtathletin ist das Kunststück gelungen, zwölf Jahre nach dem ersten Sieg ein zweites Mal Olympia-Gold zu holen. Ihre Bestleistung: 2,03 Meter, im Jahr 1983 Weltrekord. Zwischen 1981 und 1984 wurde sie viermal in Folge zur „Sportlerin des Jahres“ gewählt.

• Henry Maske

Weltmeister Halbschwer­gewicht Boxen

1980 begann Henry Maskes Aufstieg als Amateur im Mittelgewicht, der ihn zu einem der besten Boxer der Welt führen sollte. 1988 feierte er mit dem Olympiasieg die höchste Auszeichnung im Amateurboxen, bevor er 1990 ins Profilager wechselte und sich auch dort im Halbschwergewicht zum Weltmeister krönte. Bis zu 18 Millionen TV-Zuschauer verfolgten die Kämpfe des Gentlemens und sorgten für einen Box-Boom in Deutschland.

• Tobias Drachler

Teilnehmer Ironman Hawaii

3,8 Kilometer Schwimmen, 180 Kilometer Radfahren und 42,195 Kilometer Laufen: Tobias Drachler ist als aktiver Triathlet auf der legendären Ironman-Distanz unterwegs und zählt zu den besten Athleten der Welt. Bei der Europameisterschaft 2019 in Frankfurt belegte er in einem erstklassig besetzten Feld den vierten Platz, nur knapp hinter den mehrmaligen Weltmeistern Jan Frodeno und Sebastian Kienle sowie vor dem amtierenden Weltmeister Patrick Lange. Next Stop: Hawaii!

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Replica of Magellan's flagship, Nao Trinidad, docks in Charleston for interactive tours: GALLERY

by Bryce Jacquot

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCIV) — The Nao Trinidad, a replica of the flagship captained by Ferdinand Magellan, docked at the Charleston Maritime Center Saturday.

The ship will be docked in Charleston from Nov. 25 to Dec. 3. and open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

The Nao Trinidad was the flagship of the Armada del Maluco, which was the voyage that first circumnavigated the planet. It was led by Ferdinand Magellan.

Five ships were apart of this voyage and the Nao Trinidad was one of them.

READ MORE: SC Ports Authority gears up for second annual toy drive for foster kids

The replica ship weighs 150 tons, is 93 feet long, has a 26 foot beam, three masts, and a bowsprit. The height of the main mast is over 82 feet.

The ship has sailed all over the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic European Coast as it serves as a floating museum.

Visitors will be able to tour four decks of the ship, learning about the maneuvering, rigging, and interacting with the crew.

Tickets are $15 for adults, $5 for children, and $35 for families. Ticketing information can be found here .

READ MORE: Veteran facing eviction finds assistance through the Hope Center

Ongoing Venus Volcanic Activity Discovered With NASA’s Magellan Data

This computer-generated 3D model of Venus’ surface shows the volcano Sif Mons, which is exhibiting signs of ongoing activity. Using data from NASA’s Magellan mission, Italian researchers detected evidence of an eruption while the spacecraft orbited the planet in the early 1990s.

An analysis of data from Magellan’s radar finds two volcanoes erupted in the early 1990s. This adds to the 2023 discovery of a different active volcano in Magellan data.

Direct geological evidence of recent volcanic activity on Venus has been observed for a second time. Scientists in Italy analyzed archival data from NASA’s Magellan mission to reveal surface changes indicating the formation of new rock from lava flows linked to volcanoes that erupted while the spacecraft orbited the planet. Managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, Magellan mapped 98% of the planet’s surface from 1990 to 1992, and the images it generated remain the most detailed of Venus to date.

“Using these maps as a guide, our results show that Venus may be far more volcanically active than previously thought,” said Davide Sulcanese of d’Annunzio University in Pescara, Italy, who led the study. “By analyzing the lava flows we observed in two locations on the planet, we have discovered that the volcanic activity on Venus could be comparable to that on Earth.”

This latest discovery builds on the historic 2023 discovery of images from Magellan’s synthetic aperture radar that revealed changes to a vent associated with the volcano Maat Mons near Venus’ equator. The radar images proved to be the first direct evidence of a recent volcanic eruption on the planet. By comparing Magellan radar images over time, the authors of the 2023 study spotted changes caused by the outflow of molten rock from Venus’ subsurface filling the vent’s crater and spilling down the vent’s slopes.

Scientists study active volcanoes to understand how a planet’s interior can shape its crust, drive its evolution, and affect its habitability. The discovery of recent volcanism on Venus provides a valuable insight to the planet’s history and why it took a different evolutionary path than Earth.

Before starting its journey to Venus, NASA’s Magellan spacecraft was released while in Earth orbit by Space Shuttle Atlantis’ STS-30 mission. Captured in this May 4, 1989, photo, Magellan was the first planetary spacecraft to be launched from the shuttle.

Radar Backscatter

For the new study , published in the journal Nature Astronomy, the researchers likewise focused on archival data from Magellan’s synthetic aperture radar. Radio waves sent by the radar traveled through Venus’ thick cloud cover, then bounced off the planet’s surface and back to the spacecraft. Called backscatter, these reflected radar signals carried information about the rocky surface material they encountered.

Need Some Space?

The two locations studied were the volcano Sif Mons in Eistla Regio and the western part of Niobe Planitia, which is home to numerous volcanic features. By analyzing the backscatter data received from both locations in 1990 and again in 1992, the researchers found that radar signal strength increased along certain paths during the later orbits. These changes suggested the formation of new rock, most likely solidified lava from volcanic activity that occurred during that two-year period. But they also considered other possibilities, such as the presence of micro-dunes (formed from windblown sand) and atmospheric effects that could interfere with the radar signal.

To help confirm new rock, the researchers analyzed Magellan’s altimetry (surface height) data to determine slope of the topography and locate obstacles that lava would flow around.

“We interpret these signals as flows along slopes or volcanic plains that can deviate around obstacles such as shield volcanoes like a fluid,” said study co-author Marco Mastrogiuseppe of Sapienza University of Rome. “After ruling out other possibilities, we confirmed our best interpretation is that these are new lava flows.”

Using flows on Earth as a comparison, the researchers estimate new rock that was emplaced in both locations to be between 10 and 66 feet (3 and 20 meters) deep, on average. They also estimate that the Sif Mons eruption produced about 12 square miles (30 square kilometers) of rock — enough to fill at least 36,000 Olympic-size swimming pools. The Niobe Planitia eruption produced about 17 square miles (45 square kilometers) of rock, which would fill 54,000 Olympic swimming pools. As a comparison, the 2022 eruption of Mauna Loa in Hawaii, Earth’s largest active volcano, produced a lava flow with enough material to fill 100,000 Olympic pools.

“This exciting work provides another example of volcanic change on Venus from new lava flows that augments the vent change Dr. Robert Herrick and I reported last year,” said Scott Hensley, senior research scientist at JPL and co-author of the 2023 study. “This result, in tandem with the earlier discovery of present-day geologic activity, increases the excitement in the planetary science community for future missions to Venus.”

Figuring Out Volcanoes

Hensley is the project scientist for NASA’s upcoming VERITAS mission, and Mastrogiuseppe is a member of its science team. Short for Venus Emissivity, Radio science, InSAR, Topography, And Spectroscopy, VERITAS is slated to launch early next decade, using a state-of-the-art synthetic aperture radar to create 3D global maps and a near-infrared spectrometer to figure out what Venus’ surface is made of while also tracking volcanic activity. In addition, the spacecraft will measure the planet’s gravitational field to determine its internal structure.

“These new discoveries of recent volcanic activity on Venus by our international colleagues provide compelling evidence of the kinds of regions we should target with VERITAS when it arrives at Venus,” said Suzanne Smrekar, a senior scientist at JPL and principal investigator for VERITAS. “Our spacecraft will have a suite of approaches for identifying surface changes that are far more comprehensive and higher resolution than Magellan images. Evidence for activity, even in the lower-resolution Magellan data, supercharges the potential to revolutionize our understanding of this enigmatic world.”

More About the Mission

NASA’s VERITAS mission was selected in 2021 under NASA’s Discovery Program. Mission partners include Lockheed Martin Space, the Italian Space Agency, the German Aerospace Center, and Centre National d’Études Spatiales in France. The Discovery Program is managed by the Planetary Missions Program Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the Planetary Science Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

News Media Contact

Ian J. O’Neill

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-354-2649

[email protected]

Karen Fox / Charles Blue

NASA Headquarters

202-385-1287 / 202-802-5345

[email protected] / [email protected]

Giuseppina Piccirilli

Agenzia Spaziale Italiana

+39 06 85 67 431 / 887 / 655

[email protected]

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Manchester united usa tour 2023: schedule, tickets, stadiums and more, share this article.

For the first time in five years, Manchester United is headed to the United States for a preseason tour.

The Red Devils have confirmed they will head Stateside in the summer of 2023, returning for the first time since a 2018 tour that included a match against Liverpool at Michigan Stadium that drew over 100,000 fans.

“This will be our first visit to the U.S. for five years and everyone at the club is looking forward to it, especially the players, who love the high-quality facilities, the welcoming atmosphere and passionate support of our large U.S. fanbase,” said John Murtough, Manchester United’s football director.

“Tour 2023 will not only see the return of our senior players to training and playing, but there will also be valuable opportunities for up-and-coming talent from our Academy to experience life within the first-team environment – and for our U.S. fans to see some potential stars of the future.”

So far, the club has confirmed four matches of the tour: against Arsenal, Borussia Dortmund, Wrexham, and a high-profile match against Real Madrid as part of the Soccer Champions Tour.

Here are Man Utd’s fixtures for its 2023 summer tour of the United States, including how to purchase tickets.

Manchester United USA tour 2023

July 22: Man Utd vs Arsenal — MetLife Stadium, East Rutherford, NJ. TICKETS .

July 25: Man Utd vs. Wrexham — Snapdragon Stadium, San Diego, CA. 7:30 p.m. local. TICKETS .

July 26: Man Utd vs. Real Madrid — NRG Stadium, Houston, TX. TICKETS .

July 30: Man Utd vs. Borussia Dortmund — Allegiant Stadium, Las Vegas, NV. 6 p.m. local. TICKETS .

Arsenal USA tour 2023: Schedule, tickets, stadiums and more

Wrexham usa tour 2023: schedule, tickets, stadiums and more, chelsea usa tour 2023: schedule, tickets, stadiums and more.

Follow all of Pro Soccer Wire's Premier League coverage right here.

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Missing Titanic Submersible ‘Catastrophic Implosion’ Likely Killed 5 Aboard Submersible

Pieces of the missing Titan vessel were found on the ocean floor, about 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic, the Coast Guard said. OceanGate Expeditions, the vessel’s operator, said, “Our hearts are with these five souls.”

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Coast Guard Says Debris of Submersible Has Been Found

The u.s. coast guard said parts of the titan submersible found on the ocean floor indicate a “catastrophic implosion” of the vessel..

This morning, an ROV or remote-operated vehicle from the vessel Horizon Arctic discovered the tailcone of the Titan submersible approximately 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic on the seafloor. The ROV subsequently found additional debris. In consultation with experts from within the unified command, the debris is consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber. Upon this determination, we immediately notified the families. This is a incredibly unforgiving environment down there on the seafloor, and the debris is consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel. This was a incredibly complex case, and we’re still working to develop the details for the timeline involved with this casualty and the response.

Daniel Victor ,  Jesus Jiménez and Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs

After days of searching, no hope of finding survivors remains. Here’s the latest.

The five people aboard the submersible that went missing on Sunday were presumed dead on Thursday, after an international search that gripped much of the world found debris from the vessel near the wreckage of the Titanic. A U.S. Coast Guard official said the debris was “consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel.”

On Sunday, a secret U.S. network of acoustic sensors picked up indications of a possible implosion in the vicinity of the submersible around the time communications with it were lost, a senior Navy official disclosed on Thursday. The search continued because there was no immediate confirmation that the Titan had met a disastrous end, according to a second senior Navy official. Both officials spoke anonymously to discuss operational details.

However, the revelation is likely to raise further questions about a vast, multinational dayslong search and rescue effort that has ended in failure.

Those presumed lost onboard were Stockton Rush, the chief executive of OceanGate, the company that operated the submersible, who was piloting. The four passengers were a British businessman and explorer, Hamish Harding ; a British-Pakistani businessman, Shahzada Dawood, and his teenage son, Suleman ; and a French maritime expert, Paul-Henri Nargeolet , who had been on over 35 dives to the Titanic wreck site. ( Read more about the lives that were lost .)

Here’s what else to know:

A remote-controlled vehicle had located the debris from the Titan, including the submersible’s tail cone, about 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic on the ocean floor, according to Admiral Mauger.

Leaders in the submersible craft industry warned for years of possible “catastrophic” problems with the vehicle’s design. They also worried that OceanGate Expeditions had not followed standard certification procedures .

OceanGate has provided tours of the Titanic wreck since 2021 — for a price of up to $250,000 per person — as part of a booming high-risk travel industry . The company has described the trip on its website as a “thrilling and unique travel experience.”

The Titan squeezed five passengers into a tight space with no seats, only a flat floor and a single view port 21 inches in diameter. Here’s a closer look at the craft .

Eric Schmitt

Secret Navy sensors detected a possible implosion around the time the Titan’s communications failed.

The U.S. Navy, using data from a secret network of underwater sensors designed to track hostile submarines, detected “an anomaly consistent with an implosion or explosion” in the vicinity of the Titan submersible at the time communications with the vessel were lost on Sunday, two senior Navy officials said on Thursday.

But with no other indications of a catastrophe, one of the officials said, the search was continued.

The data from the sensors was combined with information from airborne Navy P-8 surveillance planes and sonar buoys on the surface to triangulate the approximate location of the Titan, one of the officials said. The analysis of undersea acoustic data and information about the location of the noise were then passed on to the Coast Guard official in charge of the search, Rear Adm. John Mauger.

Because there was no visual or other conclusive evidence of a catastrophic failure, one of the officials said, it would have been “irresponsible” to immediately assume the five passengers were dead, and the search was ordered to continue even though the outlook appeared grim. Both of the Navy officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational details.

It was not immediately clear how widely the Navy’s acoustical analysis was disseminated among the search team, nor why the Navy had not made it public earlier. The Navy’s acoustic analysis from the secret sensor network was first reported by The Wall Street Journal .

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William J. Broad

The director and deep-sea explorer James Cameron points to flaws in the Titan submersible’s design.

“We’ve never had an accident like this,” James Cameron, the Oscar-winning director of “Titanic,” said on Thursday.

Mr. Cameron, an expert in submersibles, has dived dozens of times to the ship’s deteriorating hulk and once plunged in a tiny craft of his own design to the bottom of the planet’s deepest recess.

In an interview, Mr. Cameron called the presumed loss of five lives aboard the Titan submersible from the company OceanGate like nothing anyone involved in private ocean exploration had ever seen.

“There’ve never been fatalities at this kind of depth and certainly no implosions,” he said.

An implosion in the deep sea happens when the crushing pressures of the abyss cause a hollow object to collapse violently inward. If the object is big enough to hold five people, Mr. Cameron said in an interview, “it’s going to be an extremely violent event — like 10 cases of dynamite going off.”

In 2012, Mr. Cameron designed and piloted an experimental submersible into a region in the Pacific Ocean called the Challenger Deep. Mr. Cameron had not sought certification of the vessel’s safety by organizations in the maritime industry that provide such services to numerous companies.

“We did that knowingly” because the craft was experimental and its mission scientific, Mr. Cameron said. “I would never design a vehicle to take passengers and not have it certified.”

Mr. Cameron strongly criticized Stockton Rush, the OceanGate chief executive who piloted the submersible when it disappeared Sunday, for never getting his tourist submersible certified as safe . He noted that Mr. Rush called certification an impediment to innovation.

“I agree in principle,” Mr. Cameron said. “But you can’t take that stance when you’re putting paying customers into your submersible — when you have innocent guests who trust you and your statements” about vehicle safety.

As a design weakness in the Titan submersible and a possible cautionary sign to its passengers, Mr. Cameron cited its construction with carbon-fiber composites. The materials are used widely in the aerospace industry because they weigh much less than steel or aluminum, yet pound for pound are stronger and stiffer.

The problem, Mr. Cameron said, is that a carbon-fiber composite has “no strength in compression”— which happens as an undersea vehicle plunges ever deeper into the abyss and faces soaring increases in water pressure. “It’s not what it’s designed for.”

The company, he added, used sensors in the hull of the Titan to assess the status of the carbon-fiber composite hull. In its promotional material , OceanGate pointed to the sensors as an innovative feature for “hull health monitoring.” Early this year, an academic expert described the system as providing the pilot “with enough time to arrest the descent and safely return to surface.”

In contrast to the company, Mr. Cameron called it “a warning system” to let the submersible’s pilot know if “the hull is getting ready to implode.”

Mr. Cameron said the sensor network on the sub’s hull was an inadequate solution to a design he saw as intrinsically flawed.

“It’s not like a light coming on when the oil in your car is low,” he said of the network of hull sensors. “This is different.”

A senior U.S. Navy official said that the Navy had, through acoustic analysis, “detected an anomaly consistent with an implosion or explosion in the general vicinity of where the Titan submersible was operating when communications were lost.” The official said that the identification was “not definitive,” the information was immediately shared with the search effort, and that the decision was made to continue searching to “make every effort to save the lives on board.”

Christina Goldbaum and Emma Bubola

Shahzada Dawood, Executive, 48, and Son, 19, Die Aboard Submersible

Shahzada Dawood, a British Pakistani businessman who was among the five people aboard a submersible journeying deep into the Atlantic to view the Titanic, was killed when the vessel imploded during its descent to the ocean floor, the authorities said Thursday. He was 48.

His 19-year-old son, Suleman, who was with him on the Titan submersible, was also killed.

Mr. Dawood was the vice chairman of Engro Corporation, a business conglomerate headquartered in the Pakistani port city of Karachi that is involved in agriculture, energy and telecommunications. His family is known as one of the wealthiest business families in the country.

His work focused on renewable energy and technology, according to a statement from his family.

Mr. Dawood was born on Feb. 12, 1975, in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. He studied law as an undergraduate at Buckingham University in Britain and later received a master’s degree in global textile marketing from Philadelphia University, now part of Thomas Jefferson University. In 2012, he was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.

His son was a business student at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow and had just completed his first year, a spokesman for the school said. Like his father, he was a fan of science fiction and enjoyed solving Rubik’s Cubes and playing volleyball, according to a statement from Engro.

“The relationship between Shahzada and Suleman was a joy to behold; they were each other’s greatest supporters and cherished a shared passion for adventure and exploration of all the world had to offer them,” the family’s statement said.

The pair’s shared passion for science and discovery, friends and family said, led them to embark on the expedition to the wreck of the Titanic.

Travel and science were “part of his DNA,” said Ahsen Uddin Syed, a friend of the elder Mr. Dawood who used to work with him at Engro.

A lover of “Star Trek” and “Star Wars,” Mr. Dawood was also fond of nature and often traveled to faraway places and shared pictures of his adventures, Mr. Sayed said.

His Instagram profile is like a memory book of his love of travel and nature; it is blanketed with photos of birds, flowers and landscapes, including a sunset in the Kalahari Desert, the ice sheet in Greenland, penguins in the Shetlands and a tiny bird in London with the caption “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.”

“Don’t adventures ever have an end?” Mr. Dawood wrote in a Facebook post last year from a trip to Iceland, quoting Bilbo Baggins from “The Fellowship of the Ring.” “I suppose not. Someone else always has to carry on the story.”

Khalid Mansoor, another former colleague of Mr. Dawood’s, said that Mr. Dawood was a passionate champion of the environment. He was also a trustee at the SETI Institute, an organization devoted to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

In his role at Engro, the company statement said, Mr. Dawood advocated “a culture of learning, sustainability and diversity.” He was also involved in his family’s charitable ventures, including the Engro Foundation, which supports small-scale farmers, and the Dawood Foundation, an education-focused nonprofit.

“Shahzada’s and Suleman’s absence will be felt deeply by all those who had the privilege of knowing this pair,” his family’s statement read.

Mr. Dawood is survived by a daughter, Alina, and his wife, Christine.

Salman Masood contributed reporting.

Sam Roberts

Stockton Rush, Pilot of the Titan Submersible, Dies at 61

Stockton Rush, the chief executive and founder of OceanGate and the pilot of the Titan submersible, was declared dead on Thursday after his vessel was found in pieces at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, near the rusting wreck of the R.M.S. Titanic. He was 61.

Mr. Rush oversaw finances and engineering for OceanGate, a privately owned tourism and research company based in Everett, Wash., which he founded in 2009. In 2012, he was a founder of the OceanGate Foundation, a nonprofit organization that encouraged technological development to further marine science, history and archaeology.

Mr. Rush first looked skyward for adventure. In 1981, when he was 19, he was believed to be the world’s youngest jet-transport-rated pilot.

If the sky was the limit, though, it was too confining for Mr. Rush.

“I wanted to be the first person on Mars,” he told Fast Company magazine in 2017.

Ineligible for Air Force pilot training because of poor eyesight, he said, he abandoned his dream of becoming an astronaut. Interplanetary travel didn’t seem economically viable in the foreseeable future. But he saw potential in underwater travel, and he said he was willing to take on risk and bend the rules to achieve his goals.

“I mean, if you just want to be safe, don’t get out of bed,” he said in an interview with “CBS News Sunday Morning” last year. “Don’t get in your car. Don’t do anything. At some point, you’re going to take some risk, and it really is a risk-reward question. I think I can do this just as safely by breaking the rules.”

Richard Stockton Rush III was the scion of one of San Francisco’s most famous families. He was descended on his father’s side from two signers of the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Rush and Richard Stockton.

He was born on March 31, 1962, in San Francisco. His father is chairman of the Peregrine Oil and Gas Company in Burlingame, Calif., and the Natoma Company, which manages apartment and other investment properties in and around Sacramento. His grandfather was the chairman of the shipping company American President Lines. Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco was named for his grandmother.

The Davies family’s inherited wealth was derived from Ralph K. Davies, who began at Standard Oil of California as a 15-year-old office boy and rose to become the youngest director in the company’s history.

Stockton, as Mr. Rush was known, graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in aerospace engineering from Princeton University in 1984. He received a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business in 1989.

During summer breaks, he served as a DC-8 first officer, flying out of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, for Overseas National Airways. The year he graduated, he joined the McDonnell Douglas Corporation as a flight test engineer on the F-15 program and was named the company’s representative at Edwards Air Force Base on the APG-63 radar test protocol.

Before founding OceanGate, he served on the board of BlueView Technologies, a sonar developer in Seattle, and as chairman of Remote Control Technologies, which makes remotely operated devices. He was also a trustee of the Museum of Flight in Seattle from 2003 to 2007.

In 1986, he married Wendy Hollings Wei l, a licensed pilot, substitute teacher and account manager for magazine publishing consultants. She became the director of communications for OceanGate.

Her grandfather, Richard Weil Jr., was president of Macy’s New York, and she was the great-great-granddaughter of the retailing magnate Isidor Straus and his wife, Ida, two of the wealthiest people to die when the Titanic sank.

The aging Mr. Straus, a co-owner of Macy’s, refused to board the lifeboat while younger men were being prevented from boarding. Ida Straus, his wife of four decades, declared that she would not leave her husband, and the two were seen standing arm in arm on the Titanic’s deck as the ship went down.

Information on Mr. Rush’s survivors was not immediately available.

In his CBS News interview, Mr. Rush acknowledged that it was prudent while exploring the ocean at depths of thousands of feet to avoid fish nets, overhangs and other hazards. But, he said, safety concerns could also be a drag on a swashbuckling career in which risk paid returns not only in profits but also in unforgettable experiences.

“It really is a life-changing experience, and there aren’t a lot of things like that,” he told Fast Company. “Rather than spend $65,000 to climb Mount Everest, maybe die, and spend a month living in a miserable base camp, you can change your life in a week.”

His trips in the Titan brought him the adventure he craved.

“I wanted to be sort of the Captain Kirk,” he said. “I didn’t want to be the passenger in the back. And I realized that the ocean is the universe. That’s where life is.”

Jacey Fortin

The Coast Guard says it found five major pieces of debris on the ocean floor.

The Titan submersible that vanished in the North Atlantic on Sunday appeared to have suffered a “catastrophic implosion,” the U.S. Coast Guard said on Thursday, and offered its condolences to the families of the five people who were on board.

Debris from the vessel, which vanished while descending to view the wreck of the R.M.S. Titanic, was found on the ocean floor on Thursday morning, about 1,600 feet from the bow of the shipwreck, Rear Admiral John Mauger of the Coast Guard said at a news conference on Thursday afternoon.

The debris was “consistent with catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber” of the submersible, he added.

Asked about the possibility of recovering the bodies of the victims, Admiral Mauger said that he did not have an answer. “This is an incredibly unforgiving environment down there on the sea floor,” he said.

Chances for the survival of the five passengers had begun to look grim by midweek, but rescuers had said that they were holding out hope that the Titan could be out there somewhere.

But on Thursday morning, a remotely operated vehicle discovered a debris field on the ocean bottom. Paul Hankins, a salvage expert for the U.S. Navy, said there were “five major pieces” that appeared to be parts of the Titan, a 22-foot-long vessel owned by OceanGate, including a nose cone, the front end of the pressure hull and the back end of the pressure hull.

It was too early to tell exactly when the vessel imploded, Admiral Mauger said. The implosion “would have generated significant broadband sound down there that the sonar buoys would have picked up,” he added, but listening devices in the area did not hear any signs of such a catastrophic failure.

Some underwater banging noises were picked up by searchers earlier this week, but they did not appear to have had any relation to the submersible, Admiral Mauger said. Previously, the Coast Guard had said that they repositioned their search efforts around where those noises were detected.

“I know there’s a lot of questions about how, why, when this happened,” Admiral Mauger said, adding that the authorities had those same questions. “That’s going to be, I’m sure, the focus of future review,” he said. “Right now, we’re focused on documenting the scene.”

Daniel Victor

The five people on board included the chief executive of the company that operated the submersible, a Guinness World Record-holding explorer, a man who dived to the Titanic more than 35 times, and a father-and-son duo. Read more about the lives that were lost here .

Alex Williams

Hamish Harding, an Explorer Who Knew No Bounds, Dies at 58

Hamish Harding, an aviation tycoon and ardent explorer, made it his quest to probe the heavens as well as the depths, landing him a place in Guinness World Records and ultimately leading him to a fateful plunge to the wreckage of the Titanic some two and a half miles below the surface of the North Atlantic.

The submersible craft in which he was traveling with four others lost contact with its mother ship on Sunday. After a five-day multinational search across an area the size of Massachusetts, the U.S. Coast Guard said Thursday that all five had been killed when the vessel, belonging to OceanGate Expeditions, suffered “a catastrophic implosion.”

Mr. Harding was 58.

Passengers had paid up to $250,000 each for the privilege of plunging nearly 13,000 feet below the surface for a glimpse of the remains of history’s most storied oceanic tragedy. The R.M.S. Titanic hit an iceberg and sank in 1912, four days into its maiden voyage, about 400 miles off Newfoundland. More than 1,500 people died.

At the outset of the tour, Mr. Harding saw the opportunity as an unlikely stroke of good fortune. “Due to the worst winter in Newfoundland in 40 years,” he wrote in a social media post on Saturday, “this mission is likely to be the first and only manned mission to the Titanic in 2023.”

He described himself as a “mission specialist” on the expedition.

Mr. Harding seemed to presage his own fate in a 2021 interview after a record-setting plunge to Challenger Deep, the deepest part of the ocean in the Mariana Trench.

At nearly 36,000 feet below the western Pacific Ocean, deeper than Mount Everest is tall, that four-hour, 15-minute voyage took him nearly three times further down than the Titanic site. That expedition, with the American explorer Victor Vescovo, earned two citations by Guinness World Records, for the longest distance traversed at full ocean depth by a crewed vessel and the longest time spent there on a single dive.

As Esquire Middle East magazine pointed out at the time, only 18 people had ever journeyed to the bottom of the Challenger Deep, as opposed to the 24 astronauts who had orbited or landed on the moon and the thousands who successfully had scaled the peak of Mount Everest.

Mr. Harding knew the risks. “If something goes wrong, you are not coming back,” he told The Week, an Indian newsmagazine. But in business, and in his life of adventure seeking, he seemed to embrace them.

A pilot licensed to fly both business jets and airliners, Mr. Harding started the first regular business jet service to the Antarctic in 2017, in partnership with the luxury Antarctic tourism company White Desert. The service landed its first flight, a Gulfstream G550, on a new ice runway known as Wolf’s Fang.

A lifelong space buff, he traveled to Antarctica in 2016 with Buzz Aldrin, the Apollo 11 astronaut and the second man to walk on the moon. At 86, Mr. Aldrin became the oldest person to reach the South Pole. Four years later, Mr. Harding took a similar journey with his son Giles, who at 12 became the youngest person to accomplish that feat.

In 2019, Mr. Harding set off on another record-setting venture with a former astronaut when he and the former International Space Station commander Col. Terry Virts completed the fastest circumnavigation of the world over both the North and South Poles in a Qatar Executive Gulfstream G650ER long-range business jet.

In June 2022, Mr. Harding finally got to experience the wonder of being an astronaut himself, soaring some 60 miles aboard the New Shepard spacecraft, from Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin space tourism company, to the edge of outer space.

“Once the liquid hydrogen/oxygen booster rocket gets the capsule to the edge of space, 350,000 feet above the earth,” he said in an interview last year with Business Aviation Magazine , “the sky above you is totally, completely black, even right next to the sun.”

Despite a life of dramatic quests that seemed drawn from boys’ adventure books, Mr. Harding was by nature “an explorer, not a thrill seeker,” Colonel Virts said in an interview with the BBC .

Mr. Harding apparently agreed. In discussing the Challenger Deep mission, he emphasized science, not derring-do.

“As an explorer and adventurer, I want this expedition to contribute to our shared knowledge and understanding of planet earth,” he said in the Esquire interview. He spoke of collecting samples from the ocean floor “that could contain new life forms and may even provide further insights into how life on our planet began.”

“And in searching for signs of human pollution in this remote environment,” he continued, “we hope to aid scientific efforts to protect our oceans and ensure they flourish for millennia to come.”

George Hamish Livingston Harding was born on June 24, 1964, in Hammersmith, London.

He was always drawn to the skies, and beyond. “I was 5 years old when the Apollo landing took place,” he said in the Business Aviation interview. “I vividly remember watching the event on an old black-and-white TV set with my parents in Hong Kong, where I grew up.”

“This event set the tone of my life in a way,” he continued. “We sort of felt that anything was possible after that, and we fully expected there to be package holidays to the moon by now.”

At 13, he became a cadet in the Royal Air Force flying Chipmunk trainer airplanes. He earned his pilot’s license in 1985 while an undergraduate at the University of Cambridge, where he studied chemical engineering and natural sciences.

In the 1990s, he built a career in information technology, rising to managing director of Logica India, a company based in Bangalore. He used the money he made in that industry to found Action Group, a private investment company, in 1999. He started Action Aviation in 2002.

His survivors include his wife, Linda; his sons, Rory and Giles; a stepdaughter, Lauren Marisa Szasz; and a stepson, Brian Szasz.

In the Business Aviation interview, Mr. Harding said that the Titanic dive, initially scheduled for last June, had been delayed because “the submersible was unfortunately damaged on its previous dive.” Instead, that summer he climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania with 20 family members and friends.

When asked about the risks of his boundary-pushing ventures, Mr. Harding, who was the chairman of the Middle East chapter of the Explorers Club, said, “My view is that these are all calculated risks and are well understood before we start.”

“I should add that I do not go out seeking these opportunities,” he continued. “People tend to bring them to me, and I keep saying ‘Yes!’”

Anushka Patil

The implosion “would have generated significant broadband sound down there that the sonar buoys would have picked up,” Mauger said. Listening devices in the area, which were dropped Monday, did not hear any signs of such a catastrophic failure, he reported earlier.

Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs

The underwater banging noises that were picked up by the authorities earlier this week do not appear to have had any relation to the site of the submersible’s wreckage. “There doesn’t appear to be any connection between the noises and the location on the sea floor” where the debris was found, Mauger said. Previously, the Coast Guard had said that they repositioned their search efforts around where those noises were detected.

Jesus Jimenez

Asked about the prospect of recovering the bodies of the victims, Mauger said he did not have an answer. “This is an incredibly unforgiving environment down there on the sea floor,” he said.

“I know there’s a lot of questions about how, why, when this happened,” says Admiral Mauger of the U.S. Coast Guard, adding that the authorities have those same questions. “That’s going to be, I’m sure, the focus of future review. Right now, we’re focused on documenting the scene.”

Mauger said it was too early to tell when the vessel imploded. Remote operations will continue on the sea floor, he said.

Where the Titan submersible was found — 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic — and the size of the debris field indicates that the vessel imploded, according to Carl Hartsfield, an expert with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. There does not appear to be any indication that it collided with the wreckage.

The authorities found “five major pieces of debris” that indicated they were from the Titan, including a nose cone, the front end of the pressure hull and the back end of the pressure hull, said Paul Hankins, a salvage expert for the U.S. Navy. He said that finding these pieces of debris indicated there was a “catastrophic event.”

Mauger said that officials are still working to come up with a timeline of events.

The debris found today was “consistent with catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber” in the submersible, Mauger said.

Debris from the Titan submersible, including its tail cone, was found on the ocean floor on Thursday morning, about 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic, said Rear Admiral John Mauger of the U.S. Coast Guard.

In a few moments, Rear Adm. John Mauger and Capt. Jamie Frederick of the U.S. Coast Guard will provide updates on findings from the sea floor near the Titanic.

The announcement by the company that all five passengers on the submersible are believed to be dead appears to cap an international search that stretched across several days and gripped much of the world. Even as the chances of survival looked grim, rescuers had said they were holding out hope that the Titan could be out there somewhere, hopes that appear to have been dashed by the discovery of debris.

“These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans,” the company said. “Our hearts are with these five souls and every member of their families during this tragic time.”

OceanGate said in a statement that “we now believe that our CEO Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, have sadly been lost.”

Jacey Fortin and Eric Schmitt

Here is why the U.S. Coast Guard led the search effort.

It would be a tall order for any agency: finding a submersible vessel that could be more than two miles below the surface of the ocean and hundreds of miles away from land.

But the United States Coast Guard was the best trained and equipped agency for the task, government officials and outside analysts said.

Most Americans are familiar with Coast Guard operations closer to home — from interdicting drug smugglers to assisting recreational boaters — but the maritime force has long been dedicated to search and rescue efforts at sea, including those in international waters.

For the past week, the Coast Guard oversaw an armada of vessels, aircraft and specialists from North America and Europe to find the Titan. International agreements divide the ocean into regions and offer guidance about which nations and agencies take primary responsibility for search and rescue in each. The site of the Titanic wreck is in an area generally assigned to the Coast Guard , even though it is closer to the coast of Newfoundland, Canada, than that of the continental United States.

Beyond that, the U.S. Coast Guard is considered “the premier maritime search and rescue agency in the world,” said Aaron C. Davenport, a senior researcher at the Rand Corporation and 34-year veteran of the service.

Chris Boyer, the executive director of the National Association for Search and Rescue, a nonprofit advocacy group, called the Coast Guard “the best prepared and the best choice, given the circumstances.” He added that while the United States Navy also had underwater rescue capabilities and was participating in the search, it was more focused on defense than on this type of mission.

The disappearance of the Titan, which vanished while descending to view the wreck of the Titanic, presented a unique challenge. The small, privately owned vessel was sealed shut from the outside, and rescuing people from it far below the surface would have been very difficult, Mr. Boyer said.

The Coast Guard handles thousands of rescues every year, but many are comparatively straightforward, like finding a lost fishing boat, according to Robert B. Murrett, a retired Navy vice admiral who is now deputy director of the Syracuse University Institute for Security Policy and Law.

“This one’s a little bit different because of the water depth involved, and the nature of the vehicle,” Professor Murrett said.

Even so, he said, the Coast Guard is adept at coordinating search efforts involving different agencies from different countries.

The search for the Titan was “an incredibly complex operation,” Rear Adm. John Mauger, a Boston-based Coast Guard commander, told reporters on Thursday.

“We were able to mobilize an immense amount of gear to the site in just a really remarkable amount of time, given the fact that we started without any sort of vessel response plan for this or any sort of pre-staged resources,” he said.

Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs ,  Jenny Gross and Anna Betts

OceanGate was warned of potential for ‘catastrophic’ problems with its Titanic mission.

Years before OceanGate’s submersible craft went missing in the Atlantic Ocean with five people onboard, the company faced several warnings as it prepared for its hallmark mission of taking wealthy passengers to tour the Titanic’s wreckage.

In January 2018, the company’s engineering team was about to hand over the craft — named Titan — to a new crew who would be responsible for ensuring the safety of its future passengers. But experts inside and outside the company were beginning to raise concerns.

OceanGate’s director of marine operations, David Lochridge, started working on a report around that time, according to court documents, ultimately producing a scathing document in which he said the craft needed more testing and stressed “the potential dangers to passengers of the Titan as the submersible reached extreme depths.”

Two months later, OceanGate faced similarly dire calls from more than three dozen people — industry leaders, deep-sea explorers and oceanographers — who warned in a letter to its chief executive, Stockton Rush, that the company’s “experimental” approach and its decision to forgo a traditional assessment could lead to potentially “catastrophic” problems with the Titanic mission.

A spokesman for OceanGate declined to comment on the five-year-old critiques from Mr. Lochridge and the industry leaders. Nor did Mr. Lochridge respond to a request for comment.

The United States Coast Guard said on Twitter that a debris field was found in the search area by a remote-operated vehicle. Experts are evaluating the information, the Coast Guard said.

The Coast Guard said it would hold a news conference at 3 p..m. Eastern time in Boston to address findings from a remote-operated vehicle deployed by the Canadian vessel Horizon Arctic on the sea floor near the Titanic.

Jenny Gross

Another remotely controlled deep-sea vehicle is en route to the search area.

A remotely operated vehicle that can reach 6,000 meters (about 19,700 feet) below the surface of the ocean was en route to join the search for the missing Titan submersible in the North Atlantic, the Explorers Club, a New York-based organization that counts two of the missing passengers among its members, said on Thursday.

The vehicle, owned by Magellan, a deepwater seabed-mapping company, was being transported from Britain to St. John’s, Newfoundland, where it was expected to land early afternoon local time on Thursday. Two other remotely controlled vehicles are already at the search site around the wreckage of the Titanic. The Titan was on a voyage to visit the shipwreck when it disappeared on Sunday.

Magellan’s vehicle has been to the wreckage of the Titanic — which sits at a depth of about 12,500 feet — more than any other vehicle and has mapped the site , including the surrounding debris, Richard Garriott de Cayeux, president of the Explorers Club, said in a statement. It has manipulator arms that can attach lifting cables directly to a submersible, and “may prove invaluable” to the ongoing search and rescue efforts, Mr. Garriott de Cayeux said. Magellan did not respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Garriott de Cayeux said that other club members with experience diving to similar depths had a sense of what the passengers on the Titan may be facing.

“While the planned life support supply depletes, we believe crew conservation and the near freezing temperatures could prolong life support by some time and the crew knows this,” he said in the statement.

“While the situation is very difficult, we can all be grateful and hopeful as the very best people are on the job,” Mr. Garriott de Cayeux said.

Derrick Bryson Taylor

The University of Strathclyde in Glasgow confirmed on Thursday that Suleman Dawood, the 19-year-old man who is on board the missing submersible along with his father, is a business student at the school. He recently completed his first year, a spokesman for the university said.

“We are deeply concerned about Suleman, his father and the others involved in this incident,” the spokesman said. “Our thoughts are with their families and loved ones and we continue to hope for a positive outcome.”

In discussing the amount of oxygen left on the Titan, Rear Adm. John Mauger of the U.S. Coast Guard said on Thursday that “people’s will to live really needs to be accounted for, as well.”

Rear Adm. John Mauger of the U.S. Coast Guard speaks to TODAY about the latest efforts to rescue the five people on board the missing submersible Titan as it runs low on oxygen. “People’s will to live really needs to be accounted for, as well,” he says. pic.twitter.com/6FJ3w1Z0Ty — TODAY (@TODAYshow) June 22, 2023

The search for the missing submersible was well underway as of Thursday morning. The Canadian vessel Horizon Arctic has deployed a remotely operated vehicle that has reached the sea floor, the U.S. Coast Guard said on Twitter.

The French vessel Atalante is also preparing to deploy its remotely operated vehicle.

Stephen Castle

A senior British naval submariner, Richard Kantharia, has been assigned to the search-and-rescue mission, Downing Street said. The lieutenant commander was already working with the United States’ Atlantic submarine fleet and was deployed to the search mission on Tuesday night. Britain is also providing a C17 aircraft to transport specialist equipment, the British government said.

Judson Jones

After a day of undesirable weather conditions yesterday, fair weather is expected in the search area on Thursday. Winds may still gust to over 20 miles per hour, but mostly clear skies and wave heights of only about four to six feet are expected.

Victoria Kim

Photos from an early test of the Titan show how the submersible is deployed.

OceanGate Expeditions , the company behind the Titan submersible missing in a remote part of the North Atlantic since Sunday, conducted tests of its craft in early 2018 outside a marina at its headquarters in Everett, Wash.

It was one of the first saltwater test dives of the vessel, made of carbon fiber and titanium, that was billed as the largest submersible of its type in the world. The company said at the time that the Titan was meant to dive far deeper than its earlier submersibles, and was made out of different material.

The company announced plans to take visitors to the Titanic wreckage in 2017, as its co-founder and chief executive Stockton Rush emphasized the rarefied nature of the experience. “Since her sinking 105 years ago, fewer than 200 people have ever visited the wreck, far fewer than have flown to space or climbed Mount Everest,” he said in a news release at the time. Mr. Rush is on board the missing submersible.

The Titan’s lighter weight and launch and recovery platform would make it “a more financially viable option for individuals interested in exploring the deep,” the company said in a 2018 news release.

But even before the April 2018 saltwater test, experts inside and outside the company had begun warning of potentially “catastrophic” problems that could result from what they said was the company’s “experimental” approach.

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The Russian Odyssey

An extended 'South to North' view of Russia from Astrakhan to St. Petersburg through Moscow.

Explore Moscow, St. Petersburg and Russia’s Golden Ring in greater depth. Stay at gorgeous Four Seasons hotels. Enjoy special access to iconic cultural sites.

Lower Volga

Treat yourself to an unforgettable experience cruising the Volga river from Moscow to Astrakhan. The tour includes 2 nights in Moscow.

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A Volga river cruise is more than a geographical voyage; it’s also a journey through Russia’s rich and captivating history. No other experience takes you so completely to another place and time. The Volga is Europe’s longest and largest river; it meanders through the stories of Ivan the Terrible and his rise to power, the two historic ‘Greats’ Peter and Catherine, and then on into today. It’s a unique opportunity to see modern Russia in the context of its intriguing history, ably assisted by friendly and professional academics and tour guides. A Volga Dream Russian river tour promises to leave you with an unforgettable afterglow of fond memories.

Moscow to St. Petersburg River Cruise

Moscow and St. Petersburg are Russia’s best-known cities, but the towns of Russia’s historic Golden Ring are delightful too. The luxurious Volga Dream offers a unique opportunity to visit these Russian gems by sailing gently along the Volga River on an unforgettable cruising experience. In small, exclusive groups you’ll enjoy preferential access to some of Russia’s most significant cultural sites.

Moscow to Astrakhan River Cruise

Your River Cruise on the luxurious MS Volga Dream takes you from Moscow along Russia’s grand Volga River to the legend that is Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad) and Astrakhan on the Caspian Sea. Along the way, you’ll discover the treasures of Yaroslavl, the oldest city on the Volga, medieval Nizhniy Novgorod and beautiful Kazan, the ancient Tatar capital. We plan our tour carefully to combine the very best of Moscow with a world-class Volga River cruise.

Discover Russia with MS Volga Dream - Click-through map

We love hearing from guests about their time in Russia and one comment often hear is how surprised people are by the Russian capital. We can’t say for certain what people expected but we do know that it’s always far removed from what they imagined! It’s been called a modern metropolis, a cosmopolitan city, an historic gem, an architectural treasure and a cultural powerhouse, among other descriptions. Majestic Moscow has always surprised our guests and left them with lasting and fond memories.

Russia’s famous Golden Ring is an archipelago of historic towns surrounding Moscow. Uglich is one of the oldest and was founded under Igor, the last Varangian prince. It once resisted the Mongol invasion and its ancient walls saw the grisly murder of young Dmitri, son of Ivan the Terrible. The impressive Church of St. Dmitri on the Blood, with its classic onion domes and blood red walls, is a fine example of classic Russian architecture. The tour ends with an enchanting choral concert.

This, the oldest city on the Volga River, and now a UNESCO World Heritage site, boasts a wealth of ancient orthodox treasures. The impressive Transfiguration of the Savior, adorned with murals depicting St. John’s apocalyptic visions can be seen in the Spassky Monastery. The Church of St. Elijah the Prophet is decorated with an awe-inspiring selection of rich frescoes. For a real taste of pre-revolutionary Russia, visitors are entertained by a costumed reception at the Governor’s House.

Close to the shores of White Lake once were the ‘tsar’s fishing grounds’. It lies in a place so serene that ancient monks chose to build no fewer than three holy sites here, including the Ferapontov Monastery. Listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site, its chapels boast magnificent frescoes by Dionysius, one of Russia’s most renowned icon painters. The Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery was a refuge for many nobles during tumultuous times and later a fortress that successfully repelled invading armies.

The Karelia region is a vast and naturally beautiful wilderness that spreads all the way from St. Petersburg to the Arctic Circle. The glorious island village of Kizhi consists almost entirely of the traditionally styled wooden buildings of ‘Old Russia’. Among them is the famous Transfiguration Church built in 1714. Remarkably, and in testament to the craftsmen of the time, not a single nail was used in its construction! Kizhi is one of the favorite stops on the river cruise to St. Petersburg.

A typical rural hamlet brought to life by warm and welcoming villagers. Volga Dream guests are invited into local homes to enjoy classic Russian fare, tea with jam and ‘pirozhki’ (pies). Enthusiastic hosts share Russian traditions and the appeal of village life while proudly showing off their scrupulously kept homes and kitchen gardens. The tour continues with a brief bus ride to see a unique World War II memorial and then, for a real glimpse of Russian life, a visit to a local primary school.

Nizhny Novgorod

This was once a wealthy city thanks to its proximity to rich eastern trading routes. During the Soviet era, the city was closed to outsiders because of its military importance. It’s also where many political prisoners were sent to live out their days in exile. The 16th-century Kremlin ramparts offer spectacular views and the city is known for its elaborately decorated churches. For Volga Dream cruise guests, the highlight of the day is an evening folk concert performed by local children.

Sailing along the Volga river, the riverbank gradually ceases to be dominated by Orthodox churches. Instead, beautiful mosques appear as the river crosses into Tatarstan where the first stop is scenic Kazan, the region’s capital. Inside the white walls of the citadel, the famous Kul Sharif mosque and the old Cathedral of Peter and Paul stand side-by-side symbolizing the two faiths’ long and peaceful coexistence in the region. A concert of traditional Tatar music ends the Volga Dream tour in Kazan.

Passing the Zhigulevskie Mountains offers wonderful views from the sundeck before touring the city. One of the key attractions is the fascinating Space Museum, which offers a revealing glimpse of how the Soviet Union pursued its ambitious journey to the cosmos. The town is also noted for its beautiful esplanade, perfect for a relaxed stroll beside the Volga river. This in turn leads to the Samara State Art Museum. Founded in 1897, it is home to a collection of more than 16,000 works of art.

This city is best known for its close associations with cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin. The Russian hero who achieved worldwide fame as the first man in space lived and studied here. Saratov used to be home to a large German community, a heritage that can still be seen in the local architecture. The Volga Dream tour visits the Radishchev State Art Museum, the first picture gallery in Russia outside Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Originally called Tsaritsyn, the city was renamed Stalingrad from 1925 to 1961 in honor of the USSR’s leader. During World War II, the city’s residents put up a heroic defense, repelling an advancing Nazi invasion. The battle for Stalingrad has gone down in history as a pivotal moment in the bloody conflict on the eastern front. The most ferocious and deadly fighting took place on Mamayev Hill, where an imposing memorial now stands close to the excellent Battle of Stalingrad Panorama Museum.

Saint Petersburg

If Moscow surprises, then St Petersburg delights. Peter the Great founded the city to showcase Russia’s newfound enlightenment. He wanted to show the modern world a cultured and advanced society. In short, he built the city to impress and in that he succeeded splendidly! The striking buildings were designed by some of the finest architects Europe had to offer and even now, the ‘Venice of the North’ never fails to enchant with its spectacular buildings and impressive canal network. It is a city of true grandeur.

Cocktails with the Captain

Commanding any ship is a complex role that calls for a long list of skills. Captains know their vessels inside out as well as well as the routes they sail and when things don’t go to plan, they have to make instant decisions. Above all though, the most important part of the job, underpinning everything they do, is to keep the ship and everyone aboard safe. The Captain’s cocktail party is a great and a wonderful opportunity for passengers and crew to get acquainted as the gets underway.

Matryoshka doll painting

There is nothing more typically Russian than a Matryoshka. It embodies the fact that there’s always something deeper to be found in every aspect of Russian life. Learning the traditional designs and techniques used to decorate these iconic dolls offers a pleasant diversion and some cathartic creativity!

Superb Service & Dining

Our restaurant serves the highest standard of international cuisine, freshly made by our Cordon Bleu Chef. Choose either a sumptuous buffet or set menu for lunch while dinner is always four or five courses with full service. High praise for the exquisite quality of meals is yet another constantly recurring feature in feedback from our guests.

Meet the Professor

From the Mongol hordes to Soviet times, Russia’s history is, like all of Europe’s, a complex web of political intrigue, war and peace, trade and treaties, as well as heroes and villains. Academics devote whole lifetimes to studying Russia’s long past and one of them presents a series of lectures shedding light on everything from Gorbachev to Chekhov, Khrushchev to Ivan the Terrible and of course, contemporary Russia. Our Professor is on board throughout the river cruise for informal conversation.

Beginner’s Russian

The Russian language can be rather beautiful and poetic and we know that many seasoned travelers enjoy trying their hand at different languages. Our onboard teachers provide an introduction to the riches of Russian, so guests can try out a few useful words and phrases on real Russians during the exciting river tours from Moscow to St. Petersburg or from Moscow to Volgograd!

Russian tea tasting

The drink we tend to associate with Russia is vodka, but tea, in fact, is the much more universal beverage of choice throughout the country. Guests will get acquainted with the Russian tea etiquette, a fundamental component of the country's social culture, and enjoy the traditional tea ceremony while cruising from St. Petersburg to Moscow or taking a Grand Volga river tour.

Russian Dinner & Vodka Tasting

All our dining is international but for Russian Dining night, the Chef includes a selection of traditional Russian dishes: Chicken Kiev, Kulebyaka and no Russian table is complete without Borsch. To add to the ‘Taste of Russia’ optional Russian dress, or at least a touch of Russian style, is provided along with enthusiastic help from our staff!

Russian Cooking Class

A plate of pelmeni might not look like much to the untrained eye, but it forms the heart of Russian cuisine and culture. Basically, it's a type of dumpling: small portions of meat and onion wrapped in a thin sheet of unleavened dough and boiled, a little like ravioli. Guests can join a Russian cooking class onboard the MS Volga Dream to learn how to cook this delicious Russian dish.

Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov Piano Recital

Some of the greatest classical music ever written comes from Russia. It’s hard to imagine a more fitting stage for a virtuoso solo recital by our resident concert pianist than the mighty Volga or a better backdrop than the heart of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov’s own serene homeland.

Russian River Cruise Aboard Volga Dream

Moscow to St. Petersburg

Why Volga Dream

Family Owned & Operated

MS Volga Dream is Russia’s only family-owned river cruise ship. She can accommodate up to 100 guests, far fewer than most other cruise ships on the river making for a uniquely friendly and intimate atmosphere aboard.

Five-Star Central Hotels

We at Volga Dream are completely convinced that, our guests should stay in great 5-star hotels in Moscow and St. Petersburg within comfortable walking distance of all the major attractions, theaters and restaurants, rather than having to waste time in traffic.

Luxurious Accommodation

The MS Volga Dream is the most intimate and elegant 5-star cruise vessel in Russia. She boasts 56 cabins, all river facing, ranging from comfortable Standard Cabins to spacious Junior Suites and the luxurious forward facing Owner's Suite.

Russian Cultural Experience

Explore Russia's past with the help of professional tour guides. Our on-board program includes fascinating talks on Russian history and politics, Russian language lessons, a festival of Russian cuisine (including vodka tasting!), and much more.

Gourmet Dining

Our on board restaurant serves international cuisine to the highest standard, all freshly made by our Cordon Bleu Chef. For Russian Dining night, he prepares a selection of traditional Russian dishes: Chicken Kiev, Kulebyaka and Borsch.

Tailored Service

All our service crew members are native Russians who are fluent in English and handpicked by the Owner. Proudly, the Volga Dream is famous for her hard working and very hospitable personnel who take care of every aspect of your life aboard.

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It's never been easier to plan your next holiday in Russia. Download our free brochure to learn more about authentic Russian river cruises.

Escape the hassle and bustle and add a satisfyingly informative element to your trip and bring together a colorful mosaic of people, history, traditions,  religion, music and art. These are the many strands that time has woven into what is known today as Russia.

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Closure In Moscow Announce ‘The Singularity’ Tour

By John Ritchie

It seems that fans of Melbourne’s Closure In Moscow just can’t get enough. Days after wrapping up their Supreme Turbo Facilitator Tour (selling out all but one of the shows) the popular five piece have announced their Singularity Tour featuring headline dates in all capital cities.

The tour marks the beginning of what plans to be a super massive travel cycle for Closure In Moscow as they head across to the U.S on the Warped Tour playing all 44 shows.

Support on the tour is from good buddies, Secrets In Scale. Tickets for all shows are on sale now.

Closure in Moscow ‘The Singularity Tour’ plus guests Secrets In Scale

Thursday 27th May Mona Vale Hotel, Sydney 18+ Tix: www.moshtix.com.au/closureinmoscow

Friday 28th May 28th Gaelic Theatre, Sydney 18+ Tix: www.moshtix.com.au/closureinmoscow

Saturday 29th May The Civic Hotel, Perth 18+ Tix: www.moshtix.com.au/closureinmoscow

Sunday 30th May YMCA HQ, Perth U18 2pm 5pm Tix: www.moshtix.com.au/closureinmoscow

Thursday 3rd June Republic Bar, Hobart 18+ Tix: www.moshtix.com.au/closureinmoscow

Friday 4th June Fowlers Live, Adelaide Lic/AA Tix: www.moshtix.com.au/closureinmoscow

Saturday 5th June East Brunswick Club, Melbourne 18+ Tix: www.moshtix.com.au/closureinmoscow www.eastbrunswickclub.com / The East box office – PH: 9388 9794

Sunday 6th June Phoenix YouthCentre, Melbourne U18 2pm -6pm Tix: www.moshtix.com.au/closureinmoscow

Thursday 10th June The Fort, Brisbane U18 6pm 9pm Tix: www.moshtix.com.au/closureinmoscow

Friday 11th June The Zoo, Brisbane, 18+ Tix: www.moshtix.com.au/closureinmoscow, http://zoo.oztix.com.au

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Inside the Russian effort to build 6,000 attack drones with Iran’s help

Leaked documents show that Moscow is progressing toward its goal of mass-producing UAVs it could use to pummel Ukrainian cities

The engineers at a once-bustling industrial hub deep inside Russia were busy planning. The team had been secretly tasked with building a production line that would operate around-the-clock churning out self-detonating drones, weapons that President Vladimir Putin’s forces could use to bombard Ukrainian cities.

A retired official of Russia’s Federal Security Service was put in charge of security for the program. The passports of highly skilled employees were seized so they could not leave the country. In correspondence and other documents, engineers used coded language: Drones were “boats,” their explosives were “bumpers,” and Iran — the country covertly providing technical assistance — was “Ireland” or “Belarus.”

This was Russia’s billion-dollar weapons deal with Iran coming to life in November, 500 miles east of Moscow in the Tatarstan region. Its aim is to domestically build 6,000 drones by summer 2025 — enough to reverse the Russian army’s chronic shortages of unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, on the front line. If it succeeds, the sprawling new drone factory could help Russia preserve its dwindling supply of precision munitions, thwart Ukraine’s effort to retake occupied territory and dramatically advance Moscow’s position in the drone arms race that is remaking modern warfare.

Although Western officials have revealed the existence of the facility and Moscow’s partnership with Tehran, documents leaked from the program and obtained by The Washington Post provide new information about the effort by two self-proclaimed enemies of the United States — under some of the world’s heaviest sanctions — to expand the Kremlin’s drone program. Altogether, the documents indicate that, despite delays and a production process that is deeply reliant on foreign-produced electronic components, Moscow has made steady progress toward its goal of manufacturing a variant of the Iranian Shahed-136, an attack drone capable of traveling more than 1,000 miles.

The documents show that the facility’s engineers are trying to improve on Iran’s dated manufacturing techniques, using Russian industrial expertise to produce the drones on a larger scale than Tehran has achieved and with greater quality control. The engineers also are exploring improvements to the drone itself, including making it capable of swarm attacks in which the UAVs autonomously coordinate a strike on a target.

OCT. 5, 2021

APRIL 4, 2023

Construction of facilities Alabuga later used to establish a drone production line.

Preliminary floor plan for part of the drone assembly line.

JUNE 20, 2021

Researchers at the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, who reviewed the documents pertaining to the production process at the request of The Post, estimated that work at the facility in the Republic of Tatarstan’s Alabuga Special Economic Zone is at least a month behind schedule. The facility has reassembled drones provided by Iran but has itself manufactured only drone bodies, and probably for not more than 300 of the UAVs, the researchers concluded. Alabuga is unlikely to meet its target date for the 6,000 drones, they said.

Even so, David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector who helped lead the research team that studied the documents, said: “Alabuga looks to be seeking a drone developmental capability that exceeds Iran’s.”

The Post obtained the documents from an individual involved in the work at Alabuga but who opposes Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The individual decided to expose details of the effort in the hope that international attention might lead to additional sanctions, potentially disrupting production and bringing the war to an end more quickly, the person told The Post.

“This was the only thing I could do to at least stop and maybe create some obstacles to the implementation of this project,” the person said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of safety concerns. “It has gone too far.”

The documents, dating from winter 2022 to spring 2023, include factory-floor blueprints, technical schematics, personnel records, memorandums provided to Iranian counterparts and presentations given to representatives of Russia’s Defense Ministry on the status of the effort code-named “Project Boat.” The Russian-language news outlet Protokol reported on some of the documents in July.

The team led by Albright and senior researcher Sarah Burkhard said the documents “appear authentic” and “go to great length to describe supply-chain procurement, production capabilities, manufacturing plans and processes, as well as plans to disguise and hide the production of Shahed drones.”

The research team found that the project faces challenges — including “doubt about its ability to reach its desired staffing levels” — but cautioned that Russia might be able to overcome those difficulties.

“Russia has a credible way of building over the next year or so a capability to go from periodically launching tens of imported Shahed-136 kamikaze drones against Ukrainian targets to more regularly attacking with hundreds of them,” Albright told The Post.

Albright said the disclosure of the records makes it difficult for Iran — which has publicly declared it is neutral in the war — to claim that it is not helping Moscow develop the ability to manufacture drones at Alabuga.

The Russian government and Alabuga did not respond to requests for comment from The Post. The Kremlin has dismissed reports that it is receiving assistance from Tehran on drones, saying that Russia relies on its own research and development .

Iran’s mission to the United Nations also did not respond to a request for comment.

‘The flying moped’

While Russia has made breakthroughs in air defense and hypersonic missiles, its military was late to prioritize drone technology. To catch up, Moscow has had to turn to Iran, one of the few nations willing to sell it military hardware.

Last summer, Russia began receiving secret shipments of Iranian drones — many of them Shaheds — that were quickly deployed to prop up its flagging war effort, U.S. and other Western officials have said.

Iran’s Shahed-136 — Russia calls the drone the Geran-2 — can carry a 118-pound explosive payload toward a target that is programmed in before launch. Because the drone is powered by a noisy propeller engine, some Ukrainians have dubbed it “the flying moped.”

The Iranian Shahed-136

Russia is working toward manufacturing a variant of the Iranian drone, which it calls the Geran-2, to supplement its dwindling stockpile of precision weapons. The drone can deliver small payloads of explosives in self-detonating attacks.

SHAHED-136 (IRAN)

Length: 11 feet

Max. speed:

Approx. weight: 440 pounds

Range: About 1,100 - 1,500 miles

Overhead view

Its nose contains a warhead and can be equipped with a camera.

Sources: Defense Express, AeroVironment

WILLIAM NEFF/THE WASHINGTON POST

Max. speed: 115 mph

Russia’s drones have struck targets deep inside Ukraine, degrading Kyiv’s precious air defenses and allowing Moscow to preserve its more expensive precision-guided missiles. The attacks, often targeting critical civilian infrastructure, have had a devastating impact on Ukraine’s war effort, knocking critical power grids offline and destroying grain stockpiles, according to Vladyslav Vlasiuk, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“Those drones are much cheaper to produce compared to the damage they cause, and this is the problem,” Vlasiuk told The Post.

In November, a Kyiv-based think tank became one of the first nongovernmental organizations to examine the wreckage from a Russian Geran-2 drone downed in Ukraine. It found that key parts — the motor and warhead — were produced by Tehran. “We knew the drone was from Iran,” said Gleb Kanievskyi, the founder of the StateWatch think tank.

That month, Iran acknowledged it had provided drones to Russia but said it had done so only before the start of the war.

In the past three months, Russia has attacked Ukraine with more than 600 of the self-detonating Shahed-136 drones, according to an intelligence assessment produced by Kyiv in July and obtained by The Post.

Conflict Armament Research, a weapons-tracking group based in Britain, examined two drones downed last month and concluded based on components it found that the Kremlin has started producing “its own domestic version of the Shahed-136.”

The Post reported in November that Russian and Iranian officials had finalized a deal in which the self-detonating drones would be produced at the Alabuga Special Economic Zone, a government-backed manufacturing hub designed to attract foreign investment. The cooperation included the transfer of designs, training of production staff and provision of increasingly hard-to-source electronic components.

“This is a full-scale defense partnership that is harmful to Ukraine, to Iran’s neighbors and to the international community,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said in June as the Biden administration confirmed plans by the two countries to build a drone production facility. Kirby said the plant “could be fully operational next year.”

Under the deal, the new documents show, Tehran agreed to sell Moscow what is effectively a franchise, with Iranian specialists sharing project documentation, locally produced or reverse-engineered components, and know-how. A document created in February by the project’s chief manager details the parameters of the effort and estimates the cost for some aspects of the project to be 151 billion rubles, more than $2 billion at the exchange rate at the time. Under agreements reached earlier, more than half of that sum was to go to Iran, which insisted on being paid in dollars or gold because of the volatility of the ruble, the individual who provided the documents said.

The effort — at a facility larger than 14 football fields and set to be expanded — is to be separated into three stages, according to a planning document. The first envisioned Iran’s delivery of disassembled drones that would be reassembled at the facility. The second called for the facility to produce airframes — the hollow bodies of the drones — that would be combined with Iranian-supplied engines and electronics. In the final and most ambitious stage, more than 4,000 drones would be produced with little Iranian assistance and delivered to the Russian military by September 2025.

A three-stage plan

Below is a visualization of the production timeline, based on internal documents, that engineers set out late in 2022. Experts who reviewed the documents for The Post said work has probably been delayed.

100 units per month

600 total units

Iran was to deliver disassembled drones that would be reassembled at Alabuga.

170-180 units per month

1,332 total units

The facility is to produce airframes — the hollow bodies of the drones — that would be combined with Iranian supplied engines and electronics.

226 units per month

4,068 total units

In the third stage, Alabuga is to independently produce drones built with materials and components sourced largely by Russia. Under the facility’s contract, the last of those drones must be delivered to the Russian Defense Ministry by September 2025.

Up to 170-180 units per month

The analysis conducted for The Post by the Institute for Science and International Security found that the facility’s production plan “appears to be feasible” but has “vulnerabilities that could disrupt its ability to fulfill its contract … or at least delay the fulfillment.”

Scarce components

The documents identify the sourcing of components required to build the Shahed-136 as an immediate challenge, after Western restrictions disrupted Russian access to foreign-produced electronics.

A detailed inventory, based on data provided to the Russians by Tehran, shows that over 90 percent of the drone system’s computer chips and electrical components are manufactured in the West, primarily in the United States. Only four of the 130 electronic components needed to build the drone are made in Russia, according to the document.

The research team led by Albright and Burkhard noted that none of the required items appears to be exclusively for use in military drones, and none is listed as a sensitive technology that is subject to export controls by the U.S. Commerce Department. The components would, however, fall under a near-blanket ban the United States recently imposed on the export of electronics to Russia, the team said.

The flight-control unit, used to pilot the drone, comprises 21 separate electronic components manufactured by the Dallas-based company Texas Instruments. At least 13 electronic components manufactured by the Massachusetts-based company Analog Devices are present in all of the drone’s major circuit boards, including an accelerometer critical for the craft’s operation that allows the UAV to navigate along a preprogrammed route if the GPS signal is lost.

One document highlights the need to develop a supply channel for various American components, including a Kintex-7 FPGA, a processor used in the drone’s navigation and communication system, made by a company that was acquired last year by California-based AMD. Without elaborating, another spreadsheet notes the domestic availability of Western-made components inside Russia and lists U.S.-based electronics distributors Mouser and DigiKey as potential suppliers.

AMD, DigiKey, Texas Instruments and Analog Devices told The Post that they comply with all U.S. sanctions and global export regulations and work to ensure that the products they make or distribute are not diverted to prohibited users. Mouser did not respond to requests for comment.

The documents do not suggest that any Western company directly supplied Iran or Russia with components used in production of the drone.

In response to questions from The Post, the White House said U.S. officials have worked to prevent Moscow from obtaining technology that might be used in its war against Ukraine and have imposed sanctions against those involved in the transfer of Iranian military equipment to Russia.

“As Russia searches for ways to evade our actions, the U.S. government, alongside allies and partners, will continue to ramp up our own efforts to counter such evasion,” Adrienne Watson, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, said in a statement.

According to a breakdown of material requirements along with the status of negotiations with suppliers, Alabuga specialists were able to promptly source the materials required for manufacturing the airframe. Most of those components are supplied by Russian or Belarusian companies, and the Chinese company Metastar provided a sample of a material used to make the wings, the breakdown shows.

Metastar did not respond to a request seeking comment.

Other components proved harder to obtain. Documents highlighted a problem that perpetually plagues Russian military production: the lack of a capable domestic engine industry. The Shahed-136 is powered by a reverse-engineered German Limbach Flugmotoren L550E engine, which Iran illicitly obtained two decades ago.

To reach the final stage of the project, Russia would have to come up with its own version of the engine, which engineers described in internal documents as their most complex task. A spreadsheet created by a senior engineer on Nov. 5, titled “Questions asked to Iran at the very beginning of cooperation,” listed a request for a copy of the engine as “the most important point.”

“Better two: one to take apart, and after the chemical analysis it will not be functional; the second one is for comparative tests. The propeller is also needed for testing,” the engineer wrote. “We’ll copy it too.”

The questions — over 120 in total — were separated into thematic categories that include “policy” and “warhead,” and requested details on how Iran achieved mass production. They also asked “which countries are suppliers of electronic components.” The documents obtained by The Post do not show a response to that question.

The Alabuga team also requested a meeting with Mado, an Iranian company that produces engines and other components for UAVs with the help of illicitly obtained Western technology. Western governments imposed sanctions on the company late last year for its contribution to the war in Ukraine.

Subsequent documents include a detailed description of the re-engineered Limbach engine, known as the Mado MD550. The authors indicated that the description was compiled on the basis of the information “provided by Mado specialists.”

Efforts to reach Mado for comment were not successful.

Despite those challenges, Alabuga engineers have worked to improve the drones, the documents show. They have swapped out malfunctioning Chinese electronic components for more-reliable analogues, and they replaced a glue the Russians deemed defective and added waterproofing in a design overhaul of the airframe.

Struggling to staff up

Documents show that Alabuga has struggled to fill specialized positions at the facility, which was to have 810 employees for each of three shifts per day. The production team lacked experts in key and highly complex areas of drone development including electronic warfare systems.

Numerous Alabuga employees have traveled to drone manufacturing centers in Iran to gain expertise, according to personnel documents. Delegations included project managers and engineers, along with students and manual laborers.

While one group was visiting Tehran on Jan. 29, Israeli’s external intelligence service, the Mossad, carried out a strike on a weapons factory in the Iranian city of Isfahan, leaving flames billowing from a site believed to be a production hub for drones and missiles. Alabuga’s managers and engineers were forbidden to leave their hotel as Iranian officials worried that Israel might strike facilities the group was supposed to tour, according to the individual who provided the documents.

The documents also reveal that Central Asian workers who held low-level jobs at Alabuga were sent to Iran because they speak a language similar to Farsi. They were supposed to observe the assembly process on Iranian production sites, interpret for the rest of the delegation and undergo training that would allow them to build drones back in Russia.

By end of spring, an estimated 200 employees and 100 students had received training at the Iranian facilities, according to the documents and the individual.

Students from the local polytechnic university were required to work at the Alabuga factory as part of their curriculum, the Russian news outlet Razvorot reported in July.

Alabuga also has sought to recruit young people for menial assembly-line positions, with glitzy ads promising “a career of the future” and subsidized housing. One ad posted on Alabuga’s Telegram channels invites women ages 16 to 22 to relocate to the site and “build a promising career in the largest center for training specialists in the UAV production,” with a wage starting at $550 a month.

At the same time, the individual said, some workers have been uncomfortable with the idea of developing drones to pummel Ukraine and discontented by what they view as long work hours and poor management. To keep staffers and lure talent from rival manufacturers, Alabuga boosted salaries, budget documents show, with some key workers earning 10 times the median Russian salary. Management created obstacles to prevent employees from quitting, including seizing passports and requiring workers to seek sign-off before leaving their positions, according to the individual.

Damaged drones

The Russians had issues in dealing with the Iranian side. An estimated 25 percent of the drones shipped from Iran for Alabuga’s use and delivered by Russian Defense Ministry aircraft were damaged, according to the documents and the individual who provided them.

One document from February includes a log of damaged or faulty drones received in a second shipment of the UAVs from Iran — separated into the categories of “big boats” and “small boats,” which refer to the Shahed-136 and the Shahed-131, respectively, despite Alabuga’s mainly being interested in the former. The document indicates that 12 of the Iranian drones in the Feb. 15 delivery were inoperable, including one irreparably damaged when it was dropped on the ground.

“That was an interesting moment, because the initial agreement with Iran concerned only big Shahed drones, as the smaller 131 model is pretty useless — its payload is ten times lower compared to the 136 model, and it can maybe blow up a car,” the individual said. “But as you can see, Iran pressed its own conditions for the deal and supplied smaller models, many of them broken.”

The log shows that the Russian team lacked the expertise and replacement parts to repair the damaged or malfunctioning drones.

The team struggled to meet initial deadlines. A February memo shows that project managers warned their higher-ups about a 37-day delay in the schedule as communications with Iran were slowed by the Russian Defense Ministry’s bureaucracy and Iran’s failure to provide some technical documentation.

“Iranians aren’t used to working according to some high European standards, and I suspect they didn’t have a ready set of all documentation,” the person said.

Technicians suggested reverse-engineering a drone already in the possession of Russia’s Defense Ministry to create their own project documentation, but the request was denied as their managers feared it would be perceived as a failure on Alabuga’s part by military officials in Moscow, according to the individual.

“There was a political moment that if we say that we don’t have something, it would show our weakness and inability to implement such a complex project, so all problems were being swept under the rug,” the individual said.

Delivery of the drones and equipment to the production facility also was a challenge. The first Iranian shipments arrived at Begishevo Airport in Tatarstan with little advance notice. Staffers at Alabuga scrambled to sort out the basic logistics of transporting the cargo back to their warehouse, the individual said.

In one instance, after securing trucks to transport the shipment, the staffers realized they did not have a forklift to load the heavy wooden crates full of disassembled drones. An employee was dispatched to a nearby business to find an off-loader, only to realize after finding one that no one was qualified to operate it.

The individual related that boxes of drones were first stored in a nearly empty warehouse as the facility was not yet prepared even for simple tasks such as reattaching parts of the UAV body that had been disassembled for transportation.

“So they just unboxed them and tried to reassemble on the floor,” the individual added. “At the same time, they wanted to show the Defense Ministry that the process was ongoing, the facilities are being built, so they bought some tables and did a photo shoot to show how they are supposedly actively assembling these drones.”

High-ranking officials at Alabuga spent a week taking and retaking photos, according to the individual.

What to know about Ukraine’s counteroffensive

The latest: The Ukrainian military has launched a long-anticipated counteroffensive against occupying Russian forces , opening a crucial phase in the war aimed at restoring Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty and preserving Western support in its fight against Moscow.

The fight: Ukrainian troops have intensified their attacks on the front line in the southeast region, according to multiple individuals in the country’s armed forces, in a significant push toward Russian-occupied territory.

The front line: The Washington Post has mapped out the 600-mile front line between Ukrainian and Russian forces .

How you can help: Here are ways those in the United States can support the Ukrainian people as well as what people around the world have been donating.

Read our full coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war . Are you on Telegram? Subscribe to our channel for updates and exclusive video .

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What to know about Russia’s growing footprint in Africa

FILE - This undated photograph handed out by French military shows Russian mercenaries boarding a helicopter in northern Mali. Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov went on a tour of the Sub-Saharan region of the Sahel this week, as Moscow seeks to grow its influence in the restive, mineral-rich region of Africa. (French Army via AP, File)

FILE - In this photo released by Russian Foreign Ministry Press Service, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, left, and Guinea’s foreign minister Morissanda Kouyate shake hands near a portrait of Guinea’s President Mamadi Doumbouya during their meeting in Conakry, Guinea, on June 3, 2024. Lavrov went on a tour of the Sub-Saharan region of the Sahel this week, as Moscow seeks to grow its influence in the restive, mineral-rich region of Africa. (Russian Foreign Ministry Press Service via AP, File)

In this photo released by Russian Foreign Ministry Press Service, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, left, and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Burkina Faso Karamoko Jean-Marie Traoré smile posing for a photo during their meeting in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, Tuesday, June 4, 2024. Moscow pledged more support to Burkina Faso in fighting extremist military groups, as the Russian foreign minister continues his whirlwind tour of West Africa in an attempt to fill in the vacuum left by the region’s traditional Western partners. (Russian Foreign Ministry Press Service via AP)

In this photo released by Russian Foreign Ministry Press Service, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, left, and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Burkina Faso Karamoko Jean-Marie Traoré smile posing for a photo during their meeting in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, Tuesday, June 4, 2024. (Russian Foreign Ministry Press Service via AP)

In this photo released by Russian Foreign Ministry Press Service, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, left, and Republic of Congo’s President Denis Sassou N’Guesso shake hands during their meeting in Oyo, Republic of Congo, Tuesday, June 4, 2024. Any French military instructors in Ukraine would be a “legitimate target” for Russian armed forces, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Tuesday as he continued his latest tour of Africa, where frustration with the West has swayed several countries toward Moscow. (Russian Foreign Ministry Press Service via AP)

In this photo released by Russian Foreign Ministry Press Service, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov speaks during the talks with Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Burkina Faso Karamoko Jean-Marie Traoré in Oyo, Congo, Tuesday, June 4, 2024. (Russian Foreign Ministry Press Service via AP)

In this photo released by Russian Foreign Ministry Press Service, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, left, and Congo’s Foreign Minister Jean Claude Gakosso shake hands after a joint news conference in Oyo, Congo, Tuesday, June 4, 2024. (Russian Foreign Ministry Press Service via AP)

In this photo released by Russian Foreign Ministry Press Service, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov attends a meeting with Republic of Congo’s President Denis Sassou N’Guesso in Oyo, Republic of Congo, Tuesday, June 4, 2024. Any French military instructors in Ukraine would be a “legitimate target” for Russian armed forces, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Tuesday as he continued his latest tour of Africa, where frustration with the West has swayed several countries toward Moscow. (Russian Foreign Ministry Press Service via AP)

In this photo released by Russian Foreign Ministry Press Service, Republic of Congo’s President Denis Sassou N’Guesso attends a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Oyo, Republic of Congo, Tuesday, June 4, 2024. Any French military instructors in Ukraine would be a “legitimate target” for Russian armed forces, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Tuesday as he continued his latest tour of Africa, where frustration with the West has swayed several countries toward Moscow. (Russian Foreign Ministry Press Service via AP)

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DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — Russia’s top diplomat pledged help and military assistance while on a whirlwind tour of several countries in Africa’s sub-Saharan region of Sahel this week, as Moscow seeks to grow its influence in the restive, mineral-rich section of the continent.

Russia is emerging as the security partner of choice for a growing number of African governments in the region, displacing traditional allies like France and the United States. Sergey Lavrov, who has made several trips to Africa in recent years, this week stopped in Guinea, the Republic of Congo, Burkina Faso and Chad.

Moscow has aggressively expanded its military cooperation with African nations by using the private security company Wagner and its likely successor, Africa Corps , with Russian mercenaries taking up roles from protecting African leaders to helping states fight extremists.

The Polish Institute of International Affairs said in a study this month that in “creating the Africa Corps, Russia took an assertive approach to expand its military presence in Africa.

Moscow is also seeking political support, or at least neutrality, from many of Africa’s 54 countries over its invasion of Ukraine. African nations make up the largest voting bloc at the United Nations and have been more divided than any other group on General Assembly resolutions criticizing Russia’s actions in Ukraine.

Russia-linked entities also spread disinformation to undermine ties between African states and the West, the Africa Center For Strategic Studies, an academic institution within the U.S. Department of Defense, wrote in a March report. Moscow has been “sponsoring 80 documented campaigns, targeting more than 22 countries,” it said.

Here’s a look at how Russia is expanding its influence in Africa.

WHY ARE AFRICAN NATIONS TURNING TO RUSSIA?

Russia has taken advantage of political unrest and discontent in coup-hit nations, capitalizing on popular frustration and anger with former colonial power France. Military coups have ousted governments seen close to France and the West and doing little to alleviate grinding poverty, unemployment and other hardships.

Russia offers security assistance without interfering in politics, making it an appealing partner in places like Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso , all ruled by military juntas that seized power in recent years. In return, Moscow seeks access to minerals and other contracts.

Violence linked to extremists allied with al-Qaida and the Islamic State group has been on the rise in Sahel for years, despite efforts by France, the U.S. and other Western allies to help fight the jihadi groups there. In 2013, France launched a near decade long operation in Mali to help fight militants , which expanded to Niger, Burkina Faso and Chad. The operation ended nine years later but the conflict did not, contributing to anger with the West.

The U.S. has further lost its footing with key allies for forcing issues — including democracy or human rights — that many African states see as hypocrisy, given Washington’s close ties to some autocratic leaders elsewhere.

While the West may pressure African coup leaders over democracy and other issues, Russia doesn’t meddle in domestic affairs, Rida Lyammouri, a senior fellow at the Policy Center for the New South, told The Associated Press.

WHAT IS RUSSIA’S INTEREST IN AFRICAN COUNTRIES?

Africa is rich in minerals, oil and other resources, which come with political and legal challenges. Its resources are increasingly central to economic and national security, such as cobalt, which is used in electronics like mobile phones, or lithium, which is used in batteries.

Russia has thrived in countries where governance is limited, and has signing mining deals through companies it controls. An EU parliament study showed that Russia secured access to gold and diamonds in the Central African Republic, cobalt in Congo, gold and oil in Sudan, chromite in Madagascar, platinum and diamonds in Zimbabwe, and uranium in Namibia.

The U.S. based non-profit Democracy 21 group said in an analysis last December that Wagner and Russia may have made about $2.5 billion through the African gold trade alone since invading Ukraine in February 2022.

Though Russia is increasingly a partner to African countries in the oil and mining sector, it lags far behind as an overall trading partner. For example, data by the International Monetary shows less than 1% of Africa’s exports go to Russia, compared with 33% to the European Union.

WHERE DO RUSSIAN CONTRACTORS OPERATE IN AFRICA?

The first reports of Wagner mercenaries in Africa emerged in late 2017, when the group was deployed to Sudan to provide support to then-President Omar al-Bashir, in exchange for gold mining concessions. Wagner’s presence soon expanded to other African countries.

In 2018, Russian contractors showed up to back powerful commander Khalifa Hifter in eastern Libya who was battling militants. They also helped Hifter in his failed attempt to seize the capital of Tripoli a year later.

In the Central African Republic, Russian mercenaries have been providing security since in 2018 and in return have gained access to some of the country’s gold and diamond mines.

Coups in Mali in 2020 and 2021, in Burkina Faso in 2022 and in Niger in 2023, brought military juntas critical of the West to power. All three eventually ordered French and other Western forces out, and instead turned to Russia for military support.

Niger ordered the U.S. to withdraw its troops and close its multimillion dollar flagship investment in a sprawling military and spy base in Agadez earlier this year, after a meeting with a U.S. delegation ended poorly. The decision has upended U.S. counterinsurgency operations in Africa’s Sahel.

Weeks later, Russian trainers arrived in Niger with new defense equipment .

AP Africa news: https://apnews.com/hub/africa

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International Edition

Saturday, June 08, 2024 10:50 pm (Paris)

• International

Moscow court orders French NGO worker Laurent Vinatier to be held in 'foreign agent' case

The Moscow court ordered the French citizen, accused of gathering Russian military information, to be held in pre-trial detention on Friday, in the latest case of a Western citizen being detained in Russia.

Le Monde with AFP

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Laurent Vinatier, a 47-year-old who works for a Swiss conflict mediation NGO, was arrested on Thursday, June 6, and officially charged with breaching Russia's "foreign agents" law, charges which carry up to five years in jail.

Vinatier, who was held in a metal cage at the back of the courtroom, accepted the accusations against him. "I have accepted that I am guilty," he told the court. "I present my apologies." The court session was a hearing on selecting a measure of restraint, not a review of the case against him. The judge ordered Vinatier sent to jail until at least August 5, pending trial.

Investigators accuse the Frenchman of gathering military information that could be used against Russia by foreign states. Under Russian law, people who collect, report or share information related to Russia's military or security services are required to register as "foreign agents."

Vinatier is an advisor with the Geneva-based Center for Humanitarian Dialogue and a veteran researcher on Russia and other post-Soviet countries. The Center for Humanitarian Dialogue "works to prevent and resolve armed conflicts around the world through mediation and discreet diplomacy," according to a statement on its website. After his arrest on Thursday, it said it was working "to secure Laurent's release." French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday demanded the immediate release of Vinatier, saying the "propaganda" against him "does not match reality".

'Against the organization'

Appearing in court in a dark shirt and jeans on Friday, Vinatier spoke Russian and French during the hearing. "What happened is not against me, it's against the organization as a whole," he said. The Swiss foreign ministry said the Center for Humanitarian Dialogue was an NGO that was "funded by several states." Switzerland said it "does not finance its activities in connection with Russia."

Vinatier's lawyers had argued for him to be placed under house arrest and said he could stay at his wife's apartment in Moscow. "I have no intention of obstructing the investigation. Yesterday I had a great conversation with the investigators, proof of my good intentions," Vinatier said when questioned in court.

He faces up to five years in prison if convicted, although Russia has previously used "foreign agent" charges as a pretext to arrest people before leveling more serious charges. The law has typically been used to target Russian citizens and domestic critics of the Kremlin, such as activists, campaigners and independent journalists, rather than foreign citizens. US-Russian journalist Alsu Kurmasheva was arrested on a similar charge last year before a more serious case of spreading "false information" about the army was leveled against her.

On Thursday, Macron said he was aware of Vinatier's arrest and added that he had no connections with the French government. "It is one of our citizens working for a Swiss NGO... it was in no way someone who was working for France," Macron told French television in an interview Thursday.

In Russia, suspects can spend months on pre-trial detention pending a trial, with the period in jail regularly extended by a few months in court hearings.

Westerners arrested in Russia

Russia has also arrested several Western citizens in recent years, drawing accusations that Moscow is holding them to trade in prisoner exchanges for Russians jailed abroad. US journalist Evan Gershkovich was arrested on "espionage" charges last year and former US marine Paul Whelan has been in prison for more than five years, also accused of spying.

Both reject the charges and have been designated "wrongfully detained" by the White House.

US basketball player Brittney Griner was freed in a prisoner exchange for convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout in 2022 after she was arrested at a Moscow airport with medicinal cannabis oil.

Vinatier's arrest came days after France's domestic intelligence agency the DGSI detained a 26-year-old Russian-Ukrainian man on suspicion of planning a violent act after he injured himself in an explosion.

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Transylvanian Adventure

Nine European countries in 3 weeks on this epic Magellan tour through Eastern Europe.

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What's included?

• Guided Tour
• 21 Day Tour
• Folkestone, UK
• HIRE BIKE AVAILABLE

20/07/24 – 09/08/24 05/07/25 – 25/07/25 19/07/25 – 08/08/25 04/07/26 – 24/07/26 18/07/26 – 07/08/26

We start our adventure getting the eurotunnel to Calais and from there we ride to Reims via the disused MotoGP track with the pit stops and grandstand now part of the main road. The track was the second location of the Grand Prix, several Formula one races and the MotoGP. After trying to get our knees down in France we venture into Germany riding to Baden Baden and finally Oberammergau before heading into Austria.

Riding through the dramatic mountains and lakes of Austria we bed down in Hinterglemm for 2 nights where we have a day off to relax or to get back in the saddle for a couple of rideouts. Either venture up to the Eagles nest- Hitler’s summer retreat or take a dizzy ride on the Grossglockner high alpine road, the highest mountain pass in Austria! You can also visit the ice caves in Werfen with their underground glaciers, or for the more adventurous, you can hire a bike and spend a day mountain biking along and down the ski runs in the surrounding mountains, using the many cable cars for the uphill bits. We then leave Austria and make our way through two national parks in Hungary and after crossing the Danube journey into Romania and our overnight stop in Timisoara.

Nine countries in one tour, Dracula’s castle, mud volcanoes, bears and ‘the best road in the world’ this tour has it all. You will have the holiday of a lifetime!

Transfagarasan Highway

We ride east to visit Corvins castle and encounter some unlikely sand dunes that are 500 miles from the sea en route to our hotel near the Trans-Alpine highway. After a good night’s rest we ride through the Transylvanian Alps over the Devil’s Path, this incredible mountain range is also home to a third of the wild bears and wolves in continental Europe. We then take on the Transfagarasan highway a road hailed by Jeremy Clarkson as “one of the best roads in the world… like all of the bends of all of the racetracks in the world joined together” as we make our way to Brasov for a two night stay.

We have a day off to explore the medieval town of Brasov, or if you still want more saddle time you can take a rideout to the mud volcanoes in Berca or the bear sanctuary only half an hour away from the hotel. Leaving Brasov we ride north to the birthplace of Vlad the Impaler (the real life inspiration for Dracula) and visit a working salt mine before continuing over beautiful mountains and onto Oradea on the Hungarian border.

Visit Hitler’s Bavarian summer retreat

Leaving Romania we ride off the beaten track through forests and over the mountains into Hungary and its capital of Budapest where we have a well earned day off to explore. Whether it’s the famous hot springs, sampling the cultural food or simply wandering around absorbing this amazing city you’re interested in you’re in the right place for a fun filled day! We then ride on to Krakow one of the oldest cities in Poland via Slovakia and here we have another day off to explore the beautiful old town and pretty market square, have a baileys coffee in the Jewish quarter or visit Wawel Hill where in Polish folklore Smok Wawelski the dragon had his lair. Alternatively you can visit a salt mine deep enough to fit the Eiffel tower in or take an excursion to the memorial site at Auschwitz.

From Krakow we ride across Poland into the Czech Republic through the royal forest and back to Germany. Continuing our route west we ride to the town of Lahnstain on the Rhine with its many castles to our overnight stop before riding  our last leg towards Calais with a visit to the famous race track the Nurburgring thrown in for good measure.

Want a tour to really sink your teeth into? Then look no further we’ve got excitement, the best roads in the world, mythical creatures, gothic horror, WW2 history not to mention great company, delicious food and plenty of laughs!

Tour highlights

Ride the iconic B500:  A firm favourite among bikers world wide the B500’s steep and twisty roads are an exhilarating intro to this fantastic tour.

The Devil’s path:  The highest mountain pass in Romania, the Devil’s path crosses over the Carpathian mountains and stands at 2100m above sea level.

Visit Dracula’s castle:  Visit the birthplace of Vlad the Impaler and see the beautifully eerie castle that Bram Stoker used as inspiration for the Dracula novel.

'Wether its mountain roads, beautiful scenery or a country steeped in culture that your looking for, Romania has it all. From the famous Dracula's Castle through the to the tranquil settings of the Transylvanian mountain, experiencing this beautiful country on a motorbike is one of the best ways to see it. Making memories of a lifetime, when you get home, you will want to turn around and do it all again!'

Budapest:  Budapest is a beautiful city, defined by its iconic and eclectic architecture, fascinating culture and amazing food you’re sure to have a wonderful day off the bikes exploring here. Whether you’re interested in the famous hot springs, sampling some amazing Goulash or simply wandering round and absorbing the culture you’re in the right place.

Transfagarasan highway:  Hailed as the best road in the world the Transfagarasan doesn’t disappoint with amazing views as far as you can see and with “all of the bends of all the racetracks in the world” to play on it’s not difficult to see why it’s one of the most famous roads in the world.

Transylvanian mountains:  Explore the amazing roads and scenery of the home to a third of all the wild bears and wolves in continental Europe. While we are here you can also visit a bear sanctuary, which is always a firm favourite amongst our adventurers!

Visit Hitler’s Eagles Nest retreat: The Kehlsteinhaus is a remnant from third-reich era Germany, Hitler’s alpine summer retreat. It’s a fascinating destination for any history buffs amongst the group, as it was the location of many Nazi government meetings and on at least 12 occasions a holiday spot for Hitler.

A cathedral in a salt mine: In Krakow you can visit the old town or you can take a two hour guided tour of a seven hundred year old salt mine, so huge that there is a church carved out of salt. This salt mine is so enormous that if the Eiffel tower was placed inside it it would not emerge from the top.

Auschwitz memorial site: A day tour to Auschwitz can be organised for any among the group interested in visiting from our day off in Krakow.

Explore the famous salt mine cathedral

Tour Map / Itinerary

Full Itinerary

Day 1 200 Miles

Eurotunnel to Calais and then on to the Champagne region via a disused GP track.

Day 2 216 Miles

Reims to Baden-Baden (Germany).

Day 3 221 Miles

Baden-Baden to Oberammergau via the B500.

Day 4 137 Miles

Oberammergau to Hinterglemm (Austria).

Day 5 Explore Day / Rideout Day

A selection of rideouts including Hitler’s Eagles Nest retreat, Ice caves, Grossglockner high alpine road.

Day 6 310 Miles

Hinterglemm to Veszprem (Hungary).

Day 7 219 Miles

Veszprem to Timisoara (Romania).

Day 8 165 miles

Timisoara to Alba luila with its amazing star shaped citadel.

Day 9 154 Miles

Alba lulia to Baile Govora via the trans alpina highway (the 'Devil's Path').

Day 10 175 Miles

Baile Govora to Brasov (Transfagarasan Highway)

Day 11 Explore Day / Rideout Day

Day to explore Medieval Brasov or choice of ride-outs

Day 12 165 Miles

Brasov to Turda via the birthplace of Vlad Dracul.

Day 13 160 Miles

Turda to Oradea via a Romanian bikers favourite road.

Day 14 160 Miles

Oradea to Budapest via mountain roads (Hungary).

Day 15 Explore Day

Day to explore Budapest.

Day 16 240 Miles

Budapest through Slovakia via the inspiration for Dracula's castle to Krakow (Poland).

Day 17 Explore Day

Day to explore Krakow, or excursions, salt mine cathedral, Auschwitz.

Day 18 235 Miles

Krakow to Hradec Kralove, (Czech Republic).

Day 19 214 Miles

Hradec Králové to Bavaria via National forest parks(Germany).

Day 20 214 Miles

Bavaria to Llhanstein.

Day 21 320 Miles

Lahnstein to Calais via Nurburgring & Eurotunnel home.

Common questions about this trip

Can I get a different crossing on this trip?

Of course, many of our clients cross by ferry from further north. If you would like to do this and meet the group at the hotel on the first night just let us know in the comments section of your booking form and we will deduct the cost of the Eurotunnel crossing from your booking.

What will the weather be like on this tour?

The weather can of course be changeable but it will hopefully be nice and sunny with a chance of some rain at the higher elevations along the way. A sensible mix of vented kit and waterproofs with some base layers should cover all eventualities. Full kit and packing lists are supplied and we are happy to offer advice on packing for any of the trips.

Will I find this tour too tiring?

You shouldn’t do no, we design all of our trips to be accessible to riders of all abilities and include plenty of days off the bike as part of this. These longer trips are no exception, we could easily make them 4 or 5 days shorter but we choose to add multiple rest days and avoid the motorways as much as possible so you can enjoy the ride and arrive at the hotels in the evening in good time to relax before dinner.

Can I do this tour in less time?

Yes, we also run this tour with a start point in Austria with hire included so you can fly straight in and avoid riding across Europe from the U.K. Check this itinerary out here .

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