Russian authorities have decided not to ban passenger and fishing vessels over 40 years old from entering ports due to a lack of funds for fleet renewal. Now, the bill on banning the operation of dilapidated vessels, developed at the initiative of the United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC), will only apply to cargo ships, said Deputy Transport Minister Alexander Poshivay. According to him, the draft law will apply to the cargo fleet with a gross tonnage of 500 and more register tons, or 2.83 cubic meters. At the same time, if it was previously planned to ban vessels over 40 years old from entering ports from 2030, now this threshold has been raised to 50 years for Russian ships and left at 40 years for foreign ones.
According to the Transport Ministry, in 2025, 1,782 vessels over 40 years old entered Russian ports. In particular, 522 cargo ships under the Russian flag were over the specified age. At the same time, more than half of them — 286 units — have already exceeded the 50-year mark. According to Poshivay, by 2030, domestic shipyards may launch 131 river-sea class vessels. Earlier, a source from one of the shipowner companies said that the authorities are going to revise the plans due to a reduction in state funding for the preferential leasing program for civilian ships for 2026–2028 by almost half — to 134.85 billion rubles. As a result, the number of vessels planned to be built under this program has decreased from 260 to 219. In total, as part of the fleet renewal, the Russian authorities were going to update more than 1,700 vessels of various classes over four years (The Moscow Times).
