The recent British commando raid on the tanker Smyrtos, a vessel belonging to the so-called shadow fleet, was the latest in a series of incidents involving all manner of vessels, from oil tankers and liquefied natural gas carriers to container ships, that circumvent Western sanctions by transporting Russian petroleum products, primarily to Asia, effectively bankrolling Russia’s war in Ukraine.
In early June, some 400 nautical miles off the coast of Brittany, French authorities intercepted the Tagor, sailing under a Cameroonian flag, which had set out from the Russian port of Murmansk. Months earlier, French authorities had taken similar action against the Deyna and the Boracay, flying the flags of Mozambique and Benin respectively. In late 2024, the Eagle S, registered in the Cook Islands, caused damage to underwater telecommunications cables in the Gulf of Finland, triggering an intervention by Finnish coast guard and police. And then there is the case of the explosives-laden Ukrainian drone found in Lefkada, which was most likely targeting a shadow fleet tanker.
How Many Ships and Where They Go
According to the methodology used by the leading maritime publication Lloyd’s List, a vessel qualifies as part of the shadow fleet if it is 15 years old or more (due to prohibitively high insurance costs), if its ownership structure is unknown or deliberately obscured to hide the true beneficiary, if it operates exclusively in the trade of sanctioned petroleum products, and if it engages in deceptive maritime practices. These include tactics such as repeated changes of flag registry, ship-to-ship oil transfers in the middle of the ocean, and deliberate manipulation, jamming, or falsification of digital data transmitted through the AIS (Automatic Identification System) safety network.
“The size of the shadow fleet ranges from 1,200 to 1,500 vessels, keeping in mind that we are not talking about an officially registered fleet, which explains why different analysts and companies produce different estimates,” Elizabeth Braw, a fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank specializing in hybrid threats, told To Vima. She added that more than 700 of those ships are involved exclusively in Russian operations. A more conservative estimate comes from S&P, which puts the fleet at around 1,000 vessels, representing 17 to 18.5 percent of the global fleet, with 591 of them specifically moving Russian oil and gas. The main destinations for Russian petroleum products are markets such as China, India, Turkey, and Brazil.
Fueling Putin’s War Machine
The shadow fleet is not a Russian invention. The practice traces back to the apartheid regime in South Africa, which during the 1970s and 1980s sought to evade the embargo imposed by numerous countries. In the second decade of this century, first Iran and then Venezuela turned to the same method to bypass economic sanctions from Washington and the EU. According to the Brookings Institution, Russia already had dozens of such vessels in its arsenal by the mid-2010s. But the need to circumvent the successive rounds of economic sanctions imposed after the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 led to an explosive expansion, tripling the number of ships serving Russian needs. Given that, according to the International Energy Agency, oil revenues account for roughly one quarter of the Russian federal budget, the Kremlin turned to the shadow fleet to sustain its wartime economy.
Between $80 and $100 Billion a Year
The ships were acquired through third countries, primarily through companies based in the United Arab Emirates. Research by S&P Global found that 864 newly established Russia-linked shipping companies appeared in the UAE in 2022 alone. The main sea routes used by these vessels run through the Baltic Sea, the North Sea, the Danish Straits, the English Channel, the Black Sea, and by extension the Mediterranean, which explains why these areas have become theaters of confrontation.
Today, the profits Moscow derives from shadow fleet operations are estimated at between 80 and 100 billion dollars annually, according to Finland’s Centre for Energy and Clean Air Research. The presence of the shadow fleet in the seas around Europe is not merely a source of diplomatic friction. It comes with damage to marine energy and communications infrastructure, labor conditions bordering on exploitation, and an environmental footprint that is severely damaging. In the event of an oil spill, cleanup costs in Europe can reach $8,595 per ton of oil, while the total bill for the affected coastal country can exceed one billion dollars, according to the Kyiv School of Economics. The International Labour Organization has noted that 66 percent of abandoned vessels in 2025 were linked to shadow fleet activities.
Given that this fleet is widely recognized as a threat to freedom of navigation, environmental safety, and quite possibly the human rights of its crews, is there a solution? “Emphasis must be placed on cooperation among states that have signed the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. If that cooperation is backed by information sharing or joint patrols between the authorities of signatory states, so much the better,” Braw stressed, while noting that Russia is itself a signatory, even as it continues to violate the Convention’s rules.
