USC will replace the General Director of the Northern shipyard

The United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC, is managed by VTB Bank) will appoint Ilya Samarin as general director of the St. Petersburg Northern Shipyard. He since 2020 heads the Baltic shipyard "Yantar" USC, told RBC two sources in the shipbuilding industry. The company declined to comment on the rumors.

The interlocutors said that Samarin had already moved to St. Petersburg and began taking business with the acting general director of the Northern Shipyard Vasily Volegov.

Ilya Samarin graduated from the Higher Naval Engineering School named after F. E. Dzerzhinsky with a degree in “shipbuilding engineer”, the Naval Academy, the Financial Academy under the Government of the Russian Federation and the Russian Academy of Public Service under the President of the Russian Federation. From 2009 to 2012 he worked in the administration of Vologda. In 2013-2020, he headed the 33rd shipyard in Baltiysk (Kaliningrad region), serving the Baltic Fleet. Since 2020, he has led “Yantar”.

Northern Shipyard specializes in the construction of warships and builds fishing vessels under the investment quota program. Project 22350 frigates, Project 20380 corvettes for the Navy, 170701 trawler-processors for Norebo fishery holding, MT1112XL longliners for Virma and Globus fishing companies. In 2025, the shipyard received 9.78 billion rubles. net loss under RAS with revenue of 23.64 billion rubles.

The interlocutors of RBC in the industry note that the Northern Shipyard and Yantar are similar shipyards specializing in the construction of large warships. Both shipyards have also built a series of fishing vessels in recent years.

Samarin is already the third head, who is appointed to the post of general director of the Northern Shipyard after the USC transition to VTB management in August 2023. In February 2024, Igor Orlov, ex-governor of the Arkhangelsk region, was replaced by former top manager of Rusnano Mikhail Nenyukov. And in September 2025, the plant as acting general director was headed by Volegov.

VTB plans to carry out a large-scale modernization of the Northern Shipyard by 2031. USC General Director Andrei Puchkov said that it was “practically about the construction of a new shipyard”. Andrey Kostin, Chairman of the Board of VTB Bank, Chairman of the Board of Directors of USC, said that the cost of reconstruction could reach 300 billion rubles. At the moment, the design of the shipbuilding complex is underway, construction and installation work on the territory of the plant began in the third quarter of 2026.

Applicant for Vyborg

According to sources, the corporation also plans to appoint the head of the Vyborg Shipbuilding Plant (VSZ) the current general director of the Rybinsk shipbuilding plant “Vympel” Alexander Eshenko. One of the sources says that the candidacy of Eshenko approved in the USC, the top manager is undergoing the procedure of registration of the admission form: VSZ builds not only civilian orders (fishing trawlers), but also ice-class patrol ships for the FSB border service - icebreakers "Purga" and "Dzerzhinsky" (project 23550).

In October, Sergey Chernogubovsky, who headed the VSZ since June 2023, was replaced by Nikolai Alekseev at the head of the plant. But sources call him a “duty director” – Alekseev, a former deputy general director for safety of the Sredne-Nevsky Shipbuilding Plant (SNSZ), headed the Nevsky Shipbuilding and Ship Repair Plant for several months in 2025, before Andrey Vysotsky became the general director of the shipyard. Then, in 2026, SNSZ was also in charge for more than a month, before transferring the management of the enterprise to the general director Sergey Karachkov. Alekseev held these positions while the new CEOs were issued the admission forms.

Vyborg Shipyard is building ice-class vessels. In 2015-2016, the shipyard transferred three diesel-electric icebreakers of project 21900M (Vladivostok, Murmansk, Novorossiysk) to Rosmorport, and in 2018 Gazpromneft Shipping received from the plant icebreakers IBSV01 Alexander Sannikov and Andrei Vilkitsky. In the first wave of investment fishing quotas, he received orders for the construction of trawlers KMT-01 for the Arkhangelsk trawler fleet, as well as ST-116 trawlers for fishing companies Nord Pilgrim and Fore. Since 2020, it has been building ice-class patrol ships of Project 23550 (Purga and Dzerzhinsky) for the FSB border service. In 2025, VSZ received 141.55 million rubles. net profit on revenue of 11.15 billion rubles.