Kyiv Identifies Tankers It Says Are in Russia's Shadow Oil Fleet

Ukraine identified 238 tankers it said belong to a shadow fleet of ships that Russia is using to keep its oil and fuels moving around the world — with a view to western authorities sanctioning the carriers. 

The Military Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine said the list, published on its website, details an armada built up by Russia at a cost of about $10 billion. That “consists of over a thousand mostly outdated, poorly maintained vessels without proper insurance, with ‘confused’ ownership and management structures, located in ‘friendly’ jurisdictions, under ‘convenient’ flags,” it said.

“We work on sanctions against the Russian shadow fleet,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said. “This should be supported at the level of the entire European Union. It is the tanker fleet that provides Putin with the largest part of the income for the war against Ukraine.”

Kyiv has identified this shadow fleet as having a total deadweight of over 100 million tons, approximately 17% of the world’s oil tanker fleet. It has included a number of vessels that it says have been switched from the “Iranian ghost armada” to carry Russian oil.

It’s hard to gauge if the list would have any influence on western sanctioning authorities, who’ve already targeted large numbers of shadow fleet tankers. The outgoing Biden administration is mulling a widening of measures against Russia’s shadow fleet and possibly even targeting some of the nation’s oil exports, Bloomberg reported this week.