http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_East_PassageIn 1932 a Soviet expedition led by Professor Otto Yulievich Schmidt was the first to sail all the way from Arkhangelsk to the Bering Strait in the same summer without wintering en route. After a couple more trial runs, in 1933 and 1934, the "Northern Sea Route" was officially defined and open and commercial exploitation began in 1935. The next year, part of the Baltic Fleet made the passage to the Pacific where armed conflict with Japan was looming.
A special governing body Glavsevmorput (Chief Directorate of the Northern Sea Route) was set up in 1932, and Otto Schmidt became its first director. It supervised navigation and built Arctic ports.
During the early part of World War II, the Soviets allowed the German auxiliary cruiser Komet to use the Northern Sea Route in the summer of 1940 to evade the British Royal Navy and break out into the Pacific Ocean. Komet was escorted by Soviet icebreakers during her journey. After the start of the Soviet-German War the Soviets transferred several destroyers from the Pacific Fleet to the Northern Fleet via the Arctic. The Soviets also used the Northern Sea Route to transfer materials from the Soviet Far East to European Russia and the Germans launched Operation Wunderland in order to interdict this traffic.
After the breakup of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, commercial navigation in the Siberian Arctic went into decline. More or less regular shipping is to be found only from Murmansk to Dudinka in the west and between Vladivostok and Pevek in the east. Ports between Dudinka and Pevek see virtually no shipping. Logashkino and Nordvik were abandoned and are now ghost towns.
No he didn't make shit up he just choose his words carefully to make you jump to an incorrect conclusion. They said "the first time a Western shipping company successfully transited the Northeast Passage." Perhaps that's because a "Western shipping company" never tried before. He never mentioned that the Soviets had been using it for over 60 years.
Sometimes the truth is inconvinent...