A BRITISH adventurer is free to resume his attempt to walk around the world after a Russian court yesterday overturned a decision to deport him for illegally entering Russia via the ice bridge with Alaska.

Karl Bushby, a former paratrooper who set out from southern Chile in 1998, was detained with a fellow adventurer, Dmitry Kieffer, on April 1 after they crossed the perilous Bering Strait on foot.

The pair possessed Russian business visas but did not have permits to enter Chukotka, a restricted border area, and did not have their passports stamped at an official border crossing.

A court in Chukotka ruled on April 14 that they should be fined 2,000 roubles (£40) each and deported, meaning that they would be barred from re-entering Russia for five years.

But yesterday, a higher court annulled the deportation order, allowing Mr Bushby to resume the 36,000-mile odyssey that he hopes to finish in his hometown of Hull in 2009.

Mr Bushby, 37, who is staying in a flat in Anadyr, the capital of Chukotka, said that he was delighted and determined to complete his trek through Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan and on to Europe.

“I think it was in their best interests,” he told The Times after a night of celebrations. “We were confident because there was a lot of working behind the scenes. But it was a real nail-biter right to the last.”

He said that he could not confirm rumours that John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, had asked Roman Abramovich, the Russian billionaire who is Governor of Chukotka, to intervene. But he said that Mr Abramovich’s office had told him that the Chelsea Football Club owner had no influence on the court.

Mr Prescott’s office and the British Embassy said that they knew nothing of the Deputy Prime Minister’s rumoured role. “We are delighted that Russian authorities have shown such flexibility and allowed Karl to continue his quest,” an Embassy spokesman said.

The verdict appealed to many inside Russia, where Mr Bushby has been fêted as the quintessential eccentric British explorer. He had won public backing from Artur Chilingarov, president of the Russian Association of Arctic Explorers and a deputy Speaker of the State Duma, who this week said: “They have been walking for six years already — let them walk for another six.”

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