Ukrainian intelligence has identified 238 Russian oil tankers, which provide multibillion-dollar revenues to the aggressor and threaten global environmental security.
According to the DIU, in 2023, Russia earned $188 billion from oil exports, while Iran earned almost $53 billion.
‘Revenues from oil sales provide authoritarian actors with resources to implement nuclear programmes, develop modern drones and missiles, provide constant financial and material support for the terrorist activities of their regional proxies, and pay for the services of transnational crime networks,’ the intelligence service said.
The shadow fleet comprises more than a thousand mostly outdated, poorly maintained vessels without proper insurance, with ‘confusing’ ownership and management structures located in ‘friendly’ jurisdictions, under ‘convenient’ flags, and with a total deadweight of more than 100 million tonnes (approximately 17% of the world's oil tanker fleet).
The DIU reported that such vessels resort to deceptive tactics at sea to conceal the origin of cargo, threaten ‘environmental chaos’ and billions of dollars in losses to coastal countries due to the growing risk of disasters when passing through busy narrow international transport routes, refusing pilotage services.
Since February 2022, more than 50 incidents involving shadow tankers have already been recorded from the Danish Straits to Malaysia.
Against the backdrop of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia has lost its traditional buyers of marine oil in the EU, and has been subjected to Western restrictions on its energy sector, including the largest Russian state-owned shipping company serving the oil interests of Russia's largest oil and gas companies and traders, Sovcomflot.
However, it has found new ones in Asia, mainly in India and China, and has begun to build up its own shadow fleet of outdated tankers without ‘ties’ to the G7+ countries, which can transport oil in violation of the price ceiling. In addition, Russia uses the services of the ‘Iranian ghost armada’. Since 2022, Russia has spent about $10 billion to create its own shadow fleet.
Currently, the list includes 238 shadow tankers that help Russia and Iran deliver sanctioned oil mainly to their Asian customers, China and India. These tankers violate the G7+ oil embargo and transport Russian oil from Russian ports in the Baltic and Black Seas to EU countries, in particular through raid transshipment and STS hubs in the Black and Mediterranean Seas near European countries.
They are also involved in violating price ceilings and other restrictions on Russian oil.
Among them are vessels classified by the international NGO Greenpeace as part of the shadow fleet of tankers transporting Russian oil around the world through the Baltic Sea, threatening its ecosystems and environment, and those that, according to the US human rights group United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), have been converted from Iranian oil to transport Russian oil.