Journal Article: Law and Practice of Ship Arrest in Russia by Bulat Karimov

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

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Related links:

• “Law and Practice of Ship Arrest in Russia“, (2025) CML Working Paper Series, CML-WPS-2503

Bulat Karimov is a Doctoral Researcher at the Centre for Maritime Law (CML). He obtained his LLB from the top-ranking National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE) in Moscow, where he came first in his cohort. He was formerly a Research Associate at CML from 2023 to 2025, and prior to that, he was an Associate at NAVICUS. LAW in St Petersburg. Bulat completed his LLM (Shipping Law) at the University of Cape Town (UCT).