The Turkish ferry Seabridge was deployed from Sochi — Russian authorities did not give permission

The Seabridge ferry from the Turkish Trabzon, after three and a half days of downtime at the Sochi roadstead, set off on its way back, having not received access to the Russian port. This was announced by the General director of the company "SVS Shipping", which is the organizer and serves this route, Sergey Turkmenyan.

It was the first water voyage from Russia to Turkey in 14 years.

"We received a refusal,— Turkmenyan told TASS when asked if permission had been received to enter the port of Sochi. "At night we sent the ferry back to Trabzon."

He said that the ferry will arrive at the Turkish port on the afternoon of November 9.

As reported, the ship left the Trabzon on November 5 at 21.40 Moscow time and embarked on a raid in Sochi on the morning of November 6, waiting for approval to enter the port. There are 20 passengers on board the ferry — two Turkish citizens and 18 Russian citizens who have privately bought tickets for this flight. By noon on November 7, according to Turkmenyan, the ferry received permission to enter the internal waters of the Russian Federation, and by 17.00 its inspection was completed. It was expected that the passengers would disembark and the ferry would depart for the return flight approximately at 23:00, but this did not happen.

Earlier, the ferry made a test flight from Trabzon to Sochi, but was returned due to security issues. The governor of the Krasnodar Territory, Veniamin Kondratiev, stated that it is not yet possible to organize the necessary procedures in the port of Sochi: the priority task is to ensure the safety of everyone who comes on vacation.

The ferry service between Sochi and Trabzon was planned to be resumed after 14 years — the ferries ran from 1993 to 2011.