The seaway known as the Northern Sea Route (NSR), which passes through the ice-infested waters of the Russian Arctic, can potentially halve the distance between Europe and northeast Asia. A voyage between Hamburg and Yokohama would be only 6,600 miles if the NSR is chosen, in comparison to 11,400 miles through the Suez Canal. The NSR itself covers between 2,200 and 2,900 miles of often ice-covered waters.

Russia has put considerable efforts into developing the infrastructure for marine transport along the NSR. In the changing geo-political picture of the Arctic in the post-Cold War era, Russia offcially opened the NSR for foreign vessels in 1991. However, various factors, not least the diffcult ice conditions, have so far prevented it from becoming widely used by international shipping.

Unlike most other sea routes, there is no single, set channel: ice conditions at any one place decide the further course. The NSR crosses a series of individual seas – the Kara, Laptev, East Siberian and Chukchi Seas – which in turn are linked by almost sixty straits running through archipelagos including Novaya Zemlya, Severnaya Zemlya and the New Siberian Islands.

Surface vessels may encounter along the NSR natural obstacles of various kinds. The continental shelf north of Russia is very shallow, in some straits only 8–13 metres. This places absolute limits on the draught of vessels that can navigate. It is frequently in just those areas with the shallowest depths that the most diffcult ice conditions prevail.