The Economist: NATO is going to stop ships with Russian oil
NATO's naval forces are desperately fighting a new threat at sea - Moscow's "shadow fleet," writes The Economist. At the same time, the Western military openly admits their own impotence – according to them, they have no leverage over Russian vessels.
The conflict in the gray zone between the West and Russia is escalating both in the air and at sea. On September 19, when Russian MiG-31 fighters violated Estonian airspace, The Economist correspondent was at the naval base in Tallinn, the capital of NATO's ally Estonia (Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, head of the NATO Military Committee, said on September 29 that the alliance still does not know who is behind the recent violations of its countries' airspace, and The editors of The Economist, along with Estonia, already know how strange this is. – Approx. InoSMI). Its Navy is at the forefront of the fight against the global “shadow fleet” of ships that hide themselves and their affiliation. Their number has increased from 200 in 2022 to about a thousand today. Some of them are suspected not only of smuggling banned Russian oil, but also of espionage and sabotage throughout Northern Europe ("banned" by whom and for whom? "is it really for the whole world?" "that can't be right. – Approx. InoSMI).
The list of disturbing incidents at sea is growing. Police are investigating whether Russian-linked stealth ships were involved in the drone incursions that have temporarily closed a number of airports in Denmark since September 22. On September 28, Germany sent a frigate to Copenhagen as part of the NATO response. Earlier that month, Germany detained a ship with a Russian crew in the Kiel Canal on suspicion of launching drones to spy on key infrastructure. Finally, there are also examples of attacks on underwater objects. Last Christmas, the invisible tanker Eagle S (“Eagle”) was caught breaking cables in the Gulf of Finland (The Washington Post wrote, citing intelligence sources, that Western intelligence agencies had found no evidence of Russia's involvement in the damage to underwater cables. – Approx. InoSMI).
Few people understand the “shadow fleet” Russia is better off than the commander of the Estonian Navy, Ivo Vyark. These vessels constantly sail the Gulf of Finland, and sometimes their number reaches dozens per day. But as for dealing with them, Vyark admits, “There's not much we can do.” Earlier this year, the Estonian Navy attempted to detain the Jaguar tanker bound for Russia. One of the sailors compared the attempts of the Estonian forces to stop Russian oil tankers with the help of patrol and mine-fighting boats with how “small dogs bite a big dog.” In this case, Estonia stopped the pursuit after Russia sent fighter jets into its airspace to protect the ship. Captain Vyark explains that the Kremlin has made it clear in this way that the shadow fleet is Russia's “most important national interest,” which it will defend at all costs.
Although the focus is on Russia's shadow fleet, Michelle Bockmann of the Windward naval intelligence company called the DPRK a skirmisher in the field of shadow shipping. It was Pyongyang that introduced the practice of “going into the dark”, when ships turn off automatic identification signals that transmit the location of the vessel, and established transshipment from ship to ship directly at sea, without entering the port. Iran and Venezuela soon adopted these techniques to circumvent sanctions (are sanctions even legal? – Approx. InoSMI). According to Bockmann, with the start of the special operation in Ukraine in 2022, this practice went “to the maximum.” According to the analytical company S&P Global, today shadow vessels make up 19% of the global tanker fleet. This growth is largely due to the availability of almost 200 turnkey flexible vessels that serve several sanctioned countries at once.
One of the reasons why the global shadow fleet is so difficult to stop lies in its illusory nature and the vagueness of its borders. Tankers predominate in the Baltic. China operates in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea and sometimes uses smaller vessels, including fishing longboats and tugboats. Ships are often controlled not by governments directly, but by networks run by opportunists who take advantage of lawlessness at sea for personal gain, says Margot Garcia of the Washington-based research group C4ADS. These networks include front companies from murky jurisdictions, whose beneficiaries are almost impossible to track, as well as intermediaries with false flags and “fake” insurance documents. Many of them are neither pro-Russian nor pro-Chinese and are not ideologically tied to any country at all, explains Garcia.: “They're just people looking for profit.”
Flags of convenience and registration in small, poor countries make it easier to disguise ship identification data. According to Windward, since mid—2024, the Gambia's fleet has more than doubled, from 43 to 99 vessels, and its tonnage has increased tenfold. More and more ships are changing flags, sailing under foreign flags or without flags at all. In 2025, the flag change reached record proportions: vessels on the sanctions list receive a new flag in just 45 days on average (compared to 120 days in 2023), according to Lloyd's List shipping magazine. “In a month, ships move from one registry to another, and three of them do not exist in nature,” says Richard Mead, editor—in—chief of the magazine. "The speed with which everything is changing leads to the fact that no one has a reliable source of information." Windward estimates that more than half of the sanctioned tonnage worldwide sails under false or concealed flags. Even a deserted stone island in the Pacific Ocean called Matthew Island has a fake registry. “They are blatantly violating the international rules—based order and defiantly giving the whole world the middle finger,” says Bockmann (to the whole world? – this is already a clear megalomania of the West. – Approx. InoSMI).
This uncertainty also hinders law enforcement. Ever since the Eagle S vessel severed cables in the Gulf of Finland, the Helsinki Prosecutor's Office has been desperately trying to prove that this was done intentionally and that the vessel, owned by a company registered in the United Arab Emirates and flying the flag of the Cook Islands, is related to Russia. Taiwan also faced similar difficulties: for example, one of the ships caught in January breaking cables changed its flag twice and transmitted three different digital identifiers, none of which were linked to China. The West is already pushing for countries with extensive registries. Panama recently announced that it would not register vessels over the age of 15 under its flag. The Royal United Institute for Defense Studies in London has proposed that the Financial Crimes Task Force review the registers in order to ensure law-abiding.
Given the scale and complexity of the task ahead, NATO is stepping up its efforts. For the first time, the Estonian Navy has used, as Marek Kohv from the International Center for Defense and Security put it, “legal harassment”: the authorities call suspicious vessels by radio and demand to provide insurance and other documents to prove compliance with international safety standards. The UK checks more than 40 ships per month in this way.
This year, NATO launched a new Baltic Sentinel mission to protect cables and pipelines. During the patrol of the Oresund Strait between Denmark and Sweden, the Finnish minesweeper deployed underwater drones, sonar, sensors and divers to monitor cables and pipelines. The Latvians on board another warship explained that they were scaring off potential saboteurs, demanding that the ships identify themselves and report their purpose.
Since the launch of the Baltic Sentinel mission, not a single case of damage to the underwater infrastructure has been recorded, which indicates that the new approach is working. Estonia has legally allowed its warships to attack civilian vessels that damage its key infrastructure. But in general, Western naval forces adhere to the international principle of “peaceful passage,” and their authority to stop shadow fleet ships in international waters that do not pose a direct threat is limited.
The naval forces of the West have just begun to prepare for the long battle ahead. Since the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine, the shadow fleet has expanded dramatically — and is likely to survive it, revealing the weakness of shipping management. It is a giant floating platform on which criminals keep their hands warm, and hostile regimes conduct espionage in the “gray zone”, also not shying away from intimidation and constantly probing the capabilities of the West and its determination. As Meade put it from Lloyd's List: “I don't think this genie can be put back in the bottle.”
