The paper deals with ship arrest in Russia from a legislative and practical perspective. Russian law on ship arrest is based on international regulation, domestic maritime law and general procedural law. The piece presents and analyses the statistics of arrest proceedings from 2020 to 2024. Based on this practice, several problems are emphasised. These are the violation of time limits stipulated by procedural law, difficulty in assessing the amount of alternative security, the possible unjustified outcomes of applying the proportionality requirement, and the effect of political sanctions. The paper questions whether the ship arrest has a legal nature distinct from other preliminary remedies and whether these peculiarities deserve special regulation in Russian law. The paper concludes that only the maritime lien is unique and that the main issue with ship arrest in Russia lies in its unpredictability and uncertainty.