Evoking memories of New Zealand's tradition of peace flotillas of the 90s, a schooner set sail from Whitianga on Saturday morning in support of Ukraine and to send a message to a powerful Russian oligarch.

On board the 62-foot Windborne, skipper Avon Hansford and partner Mihaela Vlainic are planning to meet up with other boats near Kawau Island in the Hauraki Gulf, before sailing on together to Helena Bay.

'A Russian oligarch owns a multimillion dollar lodge there,” says Avon. 'We figure that Putin is not just going to suddenly decide ‘oh woops sorry guys I made a mistake' and step aside. We think that he's going to need to be pushed out and told that he's passed his use-by date.

'We may not like the oligarchs but they are our best allies to stop this madness.”

Russian investment in New Zealand has come under increased scrutiny after Russia's invasion of Ukraine last week.

Alexander Abramov's property in Helena Bay. Photo: Supplied.

Russian oligarch Alexander Abramov, whose main asset in New Zealand is the $50 million palatial estate at Helena Bay on Northland's east coast, has also invested in residential developments in New Zealand through a vehicle called Targa Capital. It's unclear how close Abramov is to Russian president Vladamir Putin who tends to regularly drop Russian billionaires from his favoured list. However, in 2017, Putin awarded him the Decoration For Beneficence for his public work and charity activity.

The NZ investments were approved by the Overseas Investment Office (OIO) in 2020 and 2021.

Anastasiya Gutorova, a Ukrainian lawyer in New Zealand, has launched a petition calling on the New Zealand Government to freeze all NZ assets of non-resident Russians and or non-NZ citizen Russian passport holders pending an end to hostilities in Ukraine and a withdrawal of all troops back into Russia.

'Abramov is one of Putin's close advisers and mates,” says Avon. 'It's a multimillion dollar lodge. For Putin to move aside, it's going to have to be done from inside the Kremlin, so our encouragement is to help those guys elbow him out of the way.”

Two flags fly from Windborne's rigging, one honouring Ukraine and the other a flag that once flew from the mast of the Vega during the nuclear free Pacific protest voyages. Photo: Supplied.

Avon has a flag flying high in the Windborne's rigging that once flew from the mast of the Vega, the 38 foot veteran nuclear protest vessel that was involved with the Peace Squadron protests against nuclear vessels in New Zealand ports in the 1980s. Vega is probably best known for the nuclear free Pacific protest voyages, along with a flotilla of New Zealand boats, to Moruroa Atoll, in French Polynesia where the French Government conducted its nuclear testing programme until 1996.

'It's an honour to carry that flag and keep up the peaceful resistance to that kind of behaviour,” says Avon. 'We're sailing along nicely, doing about six or seven knots.”

Avon and Mihaela left from Whitianga before midday, and plan to rendezvous with other boats from Auckland and Matarangi at Kawau Island, before sailing on together to Helena Bay as a peace flotilla protesting the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Alexander Abramov's lodge in Helena Bay. Photo: Supplied.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told Parliament on Tuesday that New Zealand had not "yet reached the extent of the measures [it] would take to condemn this act".

"We are pursuing new measures to target Russian investment, including measures to target financial institutions in New Zealand, including separate, but Russian targeted, specific legislation."

The government would move as quickly as possible, including discussions with other political parties, she says.

Avon says the peace flotilla isn't against the property owner personally.

'But if he is supportive of Putin and his ways, then we also want to make sure he doesn't feel welcome.

'That's all we are trying to do, and to let the people of Ukraine know that people everywhere else in the world are thinking about them,” says Avon.

'We're a bunch of alternate hippy revolutionaries whatever you like to call us.”

Windborne is a 1928 Topsail Schooner built in Porthleven England by Gilbert & Pascoe Boatbuilders. She was built for Doctor W.Frothingham Roach, a keen racer who named her Magnet. She raced as a Cutter in the 1928 Fastnet race and was re-rigged as a topsail schooner by 1930. She was hidden during WW2 to escape being taken by the British Admiralty for coastal patrol work. She turned up in the 60s in Canada under the name of Huegenot and then left for New Zealand about 1975 under the name of Windborne.

The two sailors were waved off by supporters at Whitianga, veteran peace flotilla protesters Thomas Everth and Anna Horne amongst them.

Thomas says NZ has a tradition of protesting through sailing 'against atrocities and wrong things in the world”.

Avon Hansford and Thomas Everth discussing the objectives of the peace flotilla at Whitianga before Windborne set off on Saturday. Photo: Supplied.

Thomas skippered a boat that took part in the 1995 Mururoa anti-nuclear Peace Flotilla, and Anna was the first person to smuggle out photos of the event and share them with the world.

Born and raised in Germany, Thomas says that many countries in Europe are now seizing Russian super yachts.

'So life becomes harder for the central clique of Russians who are supporting Putin and were supporting this regime and keeping Putin in power by their support,” says Thomas.

'The west feels that putting pressure on this central 100-200 people in Russia may just sway the balance towards having change inside Russia, which is the only hope we have to stop this at the moment.”

'People listen to peaceful protests, they don't like protests that throw rocks. We're sailing and showing our support in a peaceful way,” says Thomas. 'The aim of the flotilla is to demonstrate solidarity with Ukraine and to highlight the network of money connections of the Russian oligarchy.”

He plans to join the flotilla in a few days once he's got the word out to other skippers.

Veteran peace flotilla protester Anna Horne waves goodbye to Windborne at Whitianga on Saturday. Photo: Supplied.

Thomas recalls growing up in Europe for the first 30 years of his life.

'I lived next to the Iron Curtain, which went through Germany basically. Half of Eastern Europe was occupied by Russia after the Second World War – they never left.

'When I was a teenager, Russian tanks rolled into Prague, Czechoslovakia, to quell a movement there to gain freedom from the Russia oppression in Czechoslovakia. And so I've always lived under the pressure that I felt in myself that there is this other half of Eastern Europe occupied by Russia that could go from a cold war situation to something worse,” says Thomas.

'We had jets flying very low in Germany all the time training for the worst case. We had atomic weapons placed aimed at us, and of course weapons from American NATO countries in us. So we knew Germany was at the front line for this conflict between the free world and the world of oppression and military dictatorship.

'We are seeing a revival of this now with Putin. There is great danger that Putin and his military establishment wants to rule all this back, suppress the freedom in this country, even at the cost of destroying Ukraine entirely. This cannot go on. We cannot descend into World War Three. It has to be stopped.”

Professor of international law at Waikato University Alex Gillespie told Stuff that New Zealand has to treat every Russian person and entity fairly and with due process.

'But just because you are an oligarch doesn't mean you have a relationship with Putin [or the Russian military]. We want an evidentiary process so we can say this person is linked to Putin so therefore they are subject to sanction. This is why we have the Five Eyes (intelligence sharing network with Britain, Canada, the United States and Australia).

'We don't want Kiwis working out who is a good Russian or a bad Russian. You want to be working with our friends who have evidence which hopefully will be in the public domain.”

Anna Horne with a flag she used in a previous sailing protest, at Whitianga on Saturday. Photo: Supplied.

Anna Horne, at 19 years, was one of the very first people in NZ that went on a sailing vessel to Muroroa Atoll to protest the French nuclear testing, and has been a part of many peaceful sailing protests.

'It's nearly 50 years ago,” says Anna, who assisted with the Greenpeace boat, Vega that sailed up to the atoll in 1972. 'I sailed on board Vega which was renamed Greenpeace III in 1973.

'There's a great power in speaking through our boats and sailing vessels. There's a great fraternity of us who are totally committed to a peaceful future for the world, a non-nuclear future.

'Safety and biodiversity are both being totally destroyed in the Ukraine and it's really important that wherever we are, that we speak up.

'I'm absolutely thrilled that Avon is taking Windborne up to make this peaceful statement. I hope that the news gets out and that other boats will be joining him. It's a splendid boat and I wish Windborne fair winds and very good statement for the people of Ukraine that we are with them,” says Anna.

Alexander Abramov's lodge in Helena Bay. Photo: Supplied.

'We've got to do this,” says Avon. 'With the atrocities happening in the Ukraine at the moment, you can't be apathetic and do nothing. Every little bit helps.

'We are trying to get a message to them that we abhor what's going on and that we'll do every little thing that we can to help them out.

Avon believes that peace flotilla 'back in the day was part of what eventually made France stop this madness because they didn't want to be seen with this bad image anymore.

'If the world reacts and makes a peaceful stand all over the world - that is our hope that it will eventually turn evil around. New Zealand is a small country, we don't want to get into a fight, but we can offer our voice and that's what this is about.”

Windborne. Photo: Supplied.

He doesn't know how many boats will join the fleet.

'We already know some boats from Auckland are coming,” says Avon.

'It's a different time for a lot of people right now, with business depression and closures, and financial hard times with everything else going on in the world. If we get six boats to come with us I'll be rapt but I fully expect people have to get on with their lives.”

It was Thomas who made the initial suggestion to Avon to sail to Helena Bay and protest in front of Abramov's property.

'Thomas was an old campaigner during the Mururoa protest fleet, protesting nuclear subs, he's a good old activist. We want to send a message in a hope that it will be drop in the ocean in a flood of protests.”

Avon Hansford and Mihaela Vlainic on board Windborne. Photo: Supplied.

Avon hopes Abramov will see images of the flotilla flying peaceful flags in front of his lodge and get the message 'that this kind of behaviour is not allowed.

'You can't just go and kill your neighbours. That's just wrong. We've got global warming problems, annihilation of massive species of everything that's lived on the planet, we've got a pandemic going around the place. We've got problems in this world. We don't need people to go and start shooting their neighbours. So nah nah nah we're going to object to that as strongly as we can,” says Avon.

'As New Zealanders there's not that much we can do, but we can at least protest for the world to see in front of one of the oligarchs' mansions and point the finger at the people who possibly have a chance to divert further atrocities and end this,” says Thomas.

'We're hoping that a bit of encouragement to some of his mates up there to do exactly that can perhaps be aided by some actions to say ‘you're not welcome here if you're supportive of this kind of behaviour to your neighbours'.”

He has a direct message for Abramov.

'Do your very best to end this war. Do not support Putin. Do not support the military establishment. Take the message from the people of the world that it's up to you. There's about a hundred people in Russia that could end this overnight if you band together and you are one of those.”

Thomas says the peace flotilla will likely aim for arrival at Helena Bay towards the end of next week.

Windborne. Photo: Supplied.