So Much for Being Broke: Abramovich’s $610M Solaris Megayacht Is Being Resupplied Daily

In case you were wondering, all is well in the world, in the sense that nothing much has changed, even after the supposedly-crushing wave of sanctions that should have crippled the finely-tuned machine made up of Russian oligarchs, which is funneling cash into President Putin’s war in Ukraine. A report from earlier this week seems to bring confirmation of that, as well as of the fact that, when it comes to multi-millionaires, they simply live in a different universe than the rest of us.

Case in point, Roman Abramovich and his fleet of luxury yachts, an impressive collection that comprises at least four vessels worth well over $1.3 billion. Abramovich was, prior to the war in Ukraine, one of the UK’s favorite public figures and investors, but he immediately became persona non-grata when he was included on sanctions lists here. Since then, he’s also been sanctioned in the U.S. and the EU, which means that he, like many other billionaires before and after him, had to stow away whatever luxury assets he still had, to keep them from falling into the wrong hands.

Among these luxury assets is Solaris, his newest and most spectacular megayacht. Valued at well over $610 million and delivered last year, the Lloyd Werft-built Solaris barely got the chance to show Abramovich around the world before it had to rush to safety. Moored in Barcelona, Spain, at the start of the war, it sailed to Montenegro and Bodrum, Turkey, where it’s still docked to this day, off-site in Yalikavak Marina.

Abramovich has all four vessels in Turkey, according to reports: Solaris, Eclipse, and the much smaller Halo and Garcon. But it’s just Solaris that’s making the news again, with a port source telling the New York Times that it’s still being resupplied every week, because there’s a 20-person crew onboard. Every day, the crew makes sure that Eclipse has fresh supplies of water and electricity, and removes all onboard waste.

Food provisions are delivered weekly by a catering company, with the insider snidely noticing, “Twenty cases of asparagus – what would you do with so much asparagus?” “Eat it” would be the obvious answer, were it not for the unspoken question of why conditions onboard Eclipse are kept to fully-functional standards, when it’s clearly going nowhere.

The reason why this bit is making the news is to be found in the context of the larger discussion on how sanctions aren’t really returning the results governments thought they’d have. In April this year, rumors claimed that Abramovich was so broke (in the sense of lacking liquidities, not really broke) that he was trying to borrow money from friends to pay his weekly bills on his superyachts, private planes and the many real estate properties in his portfolio. While funny, that report appeared to confirm that, for a while at least, sanctions against Russian oligarchs were working.

So much for their efficacy, or for talk of Abramovich being broke. As a general rule, regular maintenance on a yacht is 10% of its value a year, so for the 460-foot (140-meter) Solaris, Abramovich will pay at least $61 million a year, which would include basic maintenance and running costs, and port fees. If the man can afford to keep it resupplied daily as if it could sail away at a moment’s notice, he’s clearly not broke – and something about sanctions is clearly not working.