Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Northern Sea Route is about 5,600 kilometres long. It begins at the Kara Strait, the boundary between the Barents and Kara Seas, and ends at the Bering Strait near Cape Dezhnev. The route passes through the Kara, Laptev, East Siberian, and Chukchi Seas.
The journey from Murmansk to Yokohama via the Suez Canal covers 12,840 nautical miles; via the Northern Sea Route it covers 5,770 nautical miles. That reduction translates into approximately 30 to 40 percent less sailing time.
Soviet geographer Otto Schmidt led the expedition that first navigated the Northern Sea Route in a single navigation season in 1932, aboard the icebreaker Alexander Sibiryakov. The route had first been conquered by Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld's expedition in 1878-79, but that journey required a single wintering.
Cargo volume on the Northern Sea Route reached 37.9 million tonnes in 2024, surpassing the previous record of 36.254 million tonnes set in 2023 by more than 1.6 million tonnes. A record 92 transit voyages also took place that year, with transit cargo exceeding 3 million tonnes.
As of 2025, Russia operates eight nuclear icebreakers managed by FSUE Atomflot under Rosatom. The fleet includes Yamal, 50 Let Pobedy, Taimyr, Vaigach, and the newest Project 22220 vessels: Arktika, Sibir, Ural, and Yakutia. Three additional Project 22220 icebreakers, Leningrad, Chukotka, and Stalingrad, are under construction, along with the even more powerful Rossiya.
Chinese logistics companies have been operating container services on the Northern Sea Route since 2023. NewNew Shipping of Hainan Yangpu completed seven transits between July and December 2023, and in 2024 signed an agreement with Rosatom to organize a regular container line and created a joint venture. In 2024, the multimodal Express NSR No. 1 service completed 13 voyages carrying over 1.4 million tonnes of cargo.