Response to the governor: more than 600 tourists from Russia blocked in the port of Turkey

The cruise liner Astoria Grande with more than 600 Russian tourists was blocked off the coast of Turkey. This was announced today, November 20, according to the Sochi1 portal.

Astoria Grande arrived at the port of Galata tonight, disembarkation was scheduled to begin at 10 am. But the ship was not given the usual permission. Therefore, the liner is forced to anchor. The portal clarifies that among the passengers of the liner there are residents of the Krasnodar Territory, Moscow and Leningrad regions.

According to Sochi1, the cruise ship sailing to Turkey, Egypt, Israel, Italy and Malta did not receive permission to enter the port of Istanbul as a response to the recent incident with the Turkish ferry Seabridge, which in early November could not enter the port of Sochi.

As EADaily reported, two weeks ago, the first Seabridge ferry from Turkey in 14 years, with 18 Russian citizens on board, did not receive permission to enter the port of Sochi after more than two days of waiting. The organizer of the flight, the General Director of SVS Shipping LLC, Sergey Turkmenyan, called the reason for the refusal of the governor of the Krasnodar Territory, Veniamin Kondratiev, to let the ship into the port under the pretext of a security threat. At the same time, another Turkish liner Astoria Grande, on which tourists also arrived from Turkey, according to TC Readovka, was checked in just an hour.

Turkmenyan also assures that the vessel's entry into the port of Sochi has been coordinated with all port services and control authorities, and the Sochi — Trabzon — Sochi ferry line has been officially registered with the Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation, it has been assigned the status of a year-round regular line until the end of 2027.