Putin’s Shadow Fleet: A Strategic Lifeline for Russia’s War Economy
Of all the weapons in Vladimir Putin’s arsenal, the most strategically crucial has proved to be not hypersonic missiles but the motley fleet of oil tankers that have allowed Russian oil to keep flowing to international markets. Oil dollars have been the lifeblood of Russia’s war economy during four years of conflict. And the West’s failure to shut that export business down has, so far, been the single most important factor behind Putin’s continued military resilience.
Economic sanctions were supposed to be the West’s superpower to punish the Kremlin for invading Ukraine in February 2022. So how come Russia now exports more oil by sea than it did at the beginning of the war? And why have Europe and the US proved powerless to stop Russia’s so-called ‘shadow fleet’ from operating?
The Shadow Fleet’s Growth: A Result of Sanctions-Busting Measures
Russia’s insurers Rosgosstrakh and Ingosstrakh (plus some Indian insurers) also began writing policies for tankers that respectable London firms refused to cover. By September 2022, vessels carrying western-issued insurance fell from 95 per cent to under 68 per cent of global shipping. At the same time, the number of shadow fleet tankers serving sanctioned oil from Venezuela, Iran and Russia rose from under 300 before Putin’s invasion to more than 750 today, more than 400 of which transport Russian crude.
The West’s Response: Sanctioning Individual Tankers and Owners
This year, there are signs that Europe and the US are, belatedly, ready to get serious about shutting down Putin’s oil lifeline. Sanctioning individual tankers and their owners has stepped up pace, from 225 in 2024 to 623 last year. Last month, 14 European countries around the Baltic and the North Sea, among them the UK, Germany, France and the Netherlands, signed a pledge to detain tankers concealing their origin, whether by changing flags, switching off transponders, or operating without proper documentation.
The Way Forward: Pressure on Nations Offering Flags of Convenience
The strategy also includes applying pressure to nations that offer so-called ‘flags of convenience’, such as the Comoros Islands, Guyana, the Gambia, Aruba and Benin. They will be required to provide quick access to their shipping registers by western law enforcement. And while under maritime law legally flagged merchant vessels enjoy the ‘right of innocent passage’ (including through territorial waters), tankers with dodgy paperwork can be treated as ‘vessels without nationality’ and can be detained or seized.
As Lithuania’s former defence minister Gabrielius Landsbergis last July, frustrated by Europe’s lack of action, pointed out: “Russia’s so-called “shadow” fleet is not in any kind of shade … we know which ships are doing the dirty work to fill the Kremlin’s coffers.” If the West can block another 10 per cent of these tankers, then it can block all 100 per cent of them.
Original Article: The secrets of Putin’s shadow fleet — Spectator