A 46-year-old Russian man was recently rescued after spending 67 days drifting through the icy waters of the Russian Far East in an inflatable raft.
On August 9, Mikhail Pichugin, his 49-year-old brother Sergey, and his 15-year-old nephew Ilya set out for Sakhalin Island from the far eastern Khabarovsk region in an inflatable raft. A few days later, their families announced their disappearance, and a search and rescue operation was mounted using planes and helicopters. All efforts to locate the inflatable boat failed, and with each passing day, hopes of finding any of the three men alive faded. By September, the chances of finding the boat had plummeted towards zero, but on Monday, October 14, the inflatable boat was spotted in the Sea of Okhotsk, about 1,000km (670 miles) from where it had set off 67 days prior. Miraculously, one of the three men was still alive.
