Hold my vodka: Antarctica’s Russian ghost ship discovers warp drive

On Monday, 1 June 2026 at 06.26am Pretoria time, Daily Maverick emailed a list of questions to Rosgeo, the Russian state mineral explorer that owns the Antarctic survey ship Akademik Alexander Karpinsky.

After a three-year investigation published Wednesday, we had flushed out evidence showing the US-sanctioned Karpinsky had hidden its location while looking for oil and gas in Antarctica.

FOR CONTEXT

Drunk Bond villain, no passport? How Russia’s ghost ship hid its Antarctic oil hunt

June 3, 2026

This is the ship that, in February 2020, used Cape Town as a staging ground to announce it had found 70 billion tons (500 billion barrels) of oil and gas in Antarctica’s Southern Ocean, where mineral prospecting is banned.

A little more than six years later, at the Antarctic Treaty’s May 2026 talks in Hiroshima, a Kremlin document made a remarkable admission. Rosgeo’s Karpinsky had led seismic surveys along Antarctica’s most geopolitically sensitive coastline somewhere between October 2024 and April 2025.

China and Russia are now building new stations on these shores. Called the Unclaimed Sector, it is the only region of Antarctica not claimed by any country. And though the Kremlin admits the ship was in Antarctica during the 2024-25 summer, Daily Maverick established that its location on the map never shifted beyond the Baltic region.

We gave Rosgeo an opportunity to respond before publication on Wednesday.

Could it explain concerns that the latest surveys amounted to outlawed prospecting? And could it explain why the ship seemed capable of being in Antarctica and the Baltic at roughly the same time?

Less than 48 hours after Daily Maverick’s questions landed in Rosgeo’s inbox, the Karpinsky suddenly acquired a voyage to its St Petersburg homeport – at “97 knots”.

According to Marine Traffic on Monday, the ship was seemingly in Tallinn since 11 May.

This was itself unusual because the ship is subject to EU Ukraine war sanctions and should not, in theory, have been enjoying an extended stay in an Estonian port.

For nearly 25 days the ship seemed to remain there under the status: “Vessel is Out-of-Range.”

Nevertheless, at 05.45am on 3 June — as though the questions we had sent on 01/06/26, 6.26am were interpreted as some kind of numerical omen — the ghost ship that seemed frozen to Tallinn departed from its mystery location. Abruptly.

What followed may deserve a place in the history of marine engineering.

97 knots, zero explanations

According to the Automatic Identification System (AIS) record, the 104.5m ship proceeded to cover roughly 170 nautical miles across the Gulf of Finland at a reported speed of 97 knots before it vanished once again.

Ninety-seven knots.

To appreciate the significance of this figure, it helps to understand what sort of ship we are discussing.

The Karpinsky is neither a speedboat, nor a military interceptor, nor even an experimental hydrofoil.

It is a 42-year-old Antarctic survey ship. On-record, non-anonymous sources strongly support the widely accepted hypothesis that:

• Large cargo ships can travel at around 20 to 25 knots.
• Fast ferries might manage 35 to 45 knots.
• Military patrol craft often reach 40 to 50 knots.
• Many naval destroyers top out around 30 knots.
• High-performance hydrofoils can exceed 50 knots.

At the time, the Gulf of Finland was experiencing a gentle 4-knot breeze. The Grande Dame of Antarctic Oil and Gas Surveys, meanwhile, was reportedly travelling at warp speed, suggesting it solved the problem by simply ignoring physics.

At approximately 180km/h, the ship was no longer competing with ships.

A floating Soviet-era Antarctic geology platform had achieved what generations of sailors could only dream of – independence from both wind and reason while saying: “Hold my vodka.”

Scientists hate this one weird trick for arriving before departure

Officially, this sequence of events should not be interpreted as cause and effect.

Ships leave ports. Journalists send emails. Life goes on.

Whatever was propelling the Karpinsky, however, was evidently not meteorological in nature.

Its latest reported departure occurred on 3 June.

The associated reported arrival date in St Petersburg? Listed as 1 June.

This introduces a fascinating possibility that would mark a breakthrough not merely in maritime engineering but in theoretical physics.

Perhaps the Karpinsky is not only the fastest Antarctic survey ship ever built, it may also be the first of its kind capable of arriving before it leaves.

From Tallinn with velocity

Readers may ultimately prefer a more conventional explanation.

When we asked the Estonian Navy in September 2024, Maritime Division director Kristjan Truu told us: “We can confirm that this is an example of spoofing.”

When the Karpinsky seemed back in Tallinn in December 2025, the Estonian Navy told us: “We confirm that the aforementioned vessel is not in Estonian ports, waters or maritime area of responsibility. According to our surveillance data, it has not left Russian waters since May 2024.”

What cannot be disputed is the sequence of events:

1. On 1 June, Daily Maverick sent questions about a ship suspected of concealing Antarctic prospecting.
2. On 3 June, the ship that was reported as stationary in Tallinn for nearly 25 days suddenly departed.
3. It then travelled at a speed that would embarrass many military ships.
4. It appears to have arrived before it left.
5. And then it vanished again.

Which, in its own way, is a perfect summary of the picaresque annals of the Akademik Alexander Karpinsky. (Do not attempt that sentence after vodka — Ed.)

A ship that, after Daily Maverick first uncovered its operations in October 2021, has triggered a diplomatic statement in the US Senate, a Westminster countermining strategy, protests that have made global headlines and a raised eyebrow in Tallinn.

In our own attempts to defy the laws of space-time, we have sent repeat questions to Rosgeo and its Antarctic subsidiary, the Polar Marine Geosurvey Expedition, for four-plus years.

The last time we received a reply from then-Rosgeo’s Polar Marine Geosurvey Expedition (PMGE) director Pavel Lunev, he offered this unfailingly polite, if slightly exasperated, reply on 16 May 2022 at 16.26.

“Thank you for your interest in the scientific work that PMGE conducts in Antarctica. As we have repeatedly written earlier, PMGE is in no way engaged in the exploration and exploitation of Antarctic mineral resources,” wrote Lunev, promoted as head of the Russian Antarctic Expedition from April 2023.

“We work on the development of geological science in accordance with [the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty],” he said. “Thank you for your interest in our activities!”

When caught on the map, simply exceed the speed of plausibility

As we have reported multiple times, PMGE leads multidisciplinary geological and geophysical studies in the classic scientific sense.

Yet from 2018, PMGE’s expedition diaries cite its assessments of the Unclaimed Sector’s oil, gas, hydrocarbon, mineral resource and raw material “potential” up to 20 times.

And so on.

So, we cannot help wonder: If the Karpinsky was conducting legitimate scientific surveys off Antarctica’s Unclaimed Sector while publicly showing up elsewhere, what was it hiding?

And if it really can travel at 97 knots, should somebody perhaps inform Formula One?

And, at least as importantly, where is it now? DM