How Putin's shadow fleet of ageing oil tankers could trigger a war with Nato

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In the Baltic Sea, an Estonian patrol vessel and helicopter move in to investigate an oil tanker.

The tanker is sailing without a national flag – a requirement of international law – and an urgent message is relayed to the ship’s bridge.

“This is Estonian warship… follow my instructions, alter your course to 105 immediately.” A boarding operation seems imminent.

But what happens next is unprecedented, and very dangerous. Out of nowhere, a Russian Su-35 fighter jet arrives to escort the tanker. Unsurprisingly, the Estonian patrol vessel peels away; the boarding is aborted.

This is the incident which unfolded last month when the Estonian navy attempted to intercept the Jaguar – a tanker which is believed to be part of the so-called “shadow fleet” which Vladimir Putin uses to evade Western oil sanctions.

It marked the first time that Russia had dispatched a military asset to chaperone a vessel from the fleet – and in Nato airspace, no less. The Su-35 was hastily escorted away by Nato fighter jets.

An Su-35 fighter jet – last month Russia scrambled such a jet to escort a shadow fleet vessel (Photo: Mikhail Degtyarev/Telegram via AP)

The incident underlined just how important the motley armada of often ageing tankers is to bankrolling Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with Western officials suspecting that the ships may also be being used for other nefarious activities, such as cutting undersea cables.

But beyond that, the episode has rung alarm bells across Western capitals about the risk that an incident involving the shadow fleet could trigger a major clash between Nato and Russia.

The birth of the shadow fleet

To understand the shadow fleet, it is necessary to go back to December 2022.

As punishment for Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine earlier that year, the G7 and its allies introduced a cap on the price of Russian oil of $60. The aim of the cap was to keep Russian oil flowing because of its importance to the global economy, while squeezing the revenues Putin relies on to fund his war.

Vladimir Putin formed the shadow fleet in a bid to avoid Western oil sanctions (Photo: Alexander Kazakov/Sputnik via AP)

To enforce wider compliance, Ukraine’s western allies deny insurance to tankers involved in the trade of Russian oil unless that trade is verifiably below the price cap.

In a bid to get round the cap, the shadow fleet was born.

The vessels use ‘flags of convenience’ – flags of a nation other than the country of ownership – murky ownership structures, and other tactics such as ship-to-ship transfers of oil to disguise what they are up to.

Sometimes the ships fly false flags or switch between different ones. In the case of the Jaguar, the ship moved from the register of Gabon to Guinea-Bissau, before sailing flagless.

The ageing and poorly maintained vessels are used to ferry the oil from Russian ports such as Primorsk and Ust-Luga to foreign shores, with India, China and Turkey representing the main destinations. Some of the crude is refined into oil products at Indian refineries which are then exported back to Western countries which have sanctioned Russian oil.

Mike Martin, a Liberal Democrat MP and former Army officer who sits on the Commons Defence Committee, told The i Paper that the emergence of the fleet was part of a broader pattern of Russia continually shifting its behaviour to evade sanctions. “You put sanctions on, they develop a shadow fleet,” he said. “It’s basically like whack-a-mole.”

The fleet poses a range of risks to the UK and its allies.

Most obviously, the oil exports are “fuelling the war in Ukraine”, in the words of one Western official. If the UK wants to tighten the screws on Putin to force him to negotiate just terms with Ukraine, it has to tackle the fleet.

But there are other threats too. One is environmental. Russia may be pursuing a deliberate strategy in using old vessels for the ramshackle fleet. In many cases, the ships are beyond the age in which they are insurable. The illicit trade in Russian oil provides unscrupulous owners with an opportunity to continue eking out a profit from rusting hulks. And because the vessels are less valuable, it makes them easier to scrap if they end up ensnared in regulatory issues, reducing the financial risks for owners.

Because it is shady and dangerous work, the ships are also often crewed by poorly trained seaman with limited experience of European waters.

Given the devastating impact which spills can have on marine ecology, bad sailors piloting rust buckets filled to the brim with crude oil represent a highly dangerous combination.

In January, a suspected shadow fleet vessel lost power and steering in German waters. The Panamanian-flagged Eventin was carrying about 99,000 tonnes of oil when it was secured by German tugboats. It was eventually confiscated by Germany in March.

Only last week, a ship which appears on the Lloyd’s List shadow fleet list, Adalynn, collided with another oil tanker off the United Arab Emirates coast near the Strait of Hormuz.

As well as the potential for serious environmental harm, accidents can affect human infrastructure, which brings us to another threat to Nato countries – whether such incidents, when they happen, are really accidents at all.

On Christmas Day last year, a mysterious incident occurred which severed three undersea fibreoptic cables connecting Finland to Estonia and a fourth connecting it with Germany.

The outages seemed to occur at the same time as a shadow fleet vessel, the Eagle S, crossed them. The ship had been moving erratically – at one point, it made a suspicious change of course, before continuing its initial route. Finnish authorities suspected that the damage had been caused by Eagle S dragging its anchor, and escorted it into custody.

Fibreoptic cables transmit internet traffic, data and voice communication, and along with submarine power cables and gas pipelines form a critical part of the nervous system of the global economy.

A Western official said that it is often genuinely unclear whether damage to undersea cables is “just an accident or somehow orchestrated”. The official added that firmly attributing such damage to deliberate malign activity by a state “takes so much more time and effort”.

However, Nato countries think it is entirely possible that Putin could be turning the shadow fleet to such sabotage as part of his wider hybrid-warfare operations against the West.

Russia is certainly intensely interested in undersea cables – last November, a Royal Navy submarine was given the unusual authorisation to surface in close proximity to a Russian spy ship, the Yantar, which had been loitering over critical undersea infrastructure.

The Western official said there was a clear need for Nato “to build up our readiness to safeguard and protect critical infrastructure”.

If the shadow fleet does pose such a serious threat, how can it be tackled?

The first weapon in the armoury has been sanctions on the vessels. Collectively, the UK, EU and US have sanctioned hundreds of tankers in the fleet.

At the G7 in Canada last week, Sir Keir Starmer announced sanctions on 20 more tankers and two companies involved in crewing and managing vessels in the fleet. The military agency leading the development of Russia’s underwater intelligence gathering operations, GUGI, was also targeted in the package.

The sanctions prevent the tankers from entering Western ports or getting serviced, while captains and shipping bosses can also be hit with asset freezes and travel bans.

UK Government sources insist the sanctions are working, pointing to one estimate that over 200 ships in the fleet have been sidelined, leading to a nearly 50 per cent reduction in dedicated capacity.

However, many countries want to see the sanctions go further. In the EU, an official from a country with a hawkish view on tackling the fleet accused some other members of dragging their feet on tougher sanctions. “Sadly, some of the European countries are aiding that fleet,” they said. Fingers are pointed at Greece, with its massive shipping industry.

According to an official from a Nato power ultimately, what is driving the fleet is the appetite of countries like India to keep buying Russian oil. They suggested that the only thing likely to completely stamp it out are secondary sanctions – sanctions levelled on third countries which keep trading with Russia. Ukraine is pushing for such measures and Donald Trump has publicly flirted with the notion in the past, but he has gone quiet on the idea of late and European leaders remain highly reticent about it.

Martin said he agreed that the fleet will continue to exist “until you can convince the Indians and the Chinese not to buy Russian oil”.

“As long as there is that demand for the oil, you’re always going to have this shadow fleet,” he said. “If you really want to get to this problem, that’s where you want to hit [it].”

Even when vessels are sanctioned, some shipowners decide to keep plying the lucrative trade, or they are replaced by others willing to do so.

That raises the question about whether Nato countries should take a more aggressive approach to intercepting ships. Given rising maritime tensions, it is unsurprising that the Royal Navy was the big winner of the Strategic Defence Review earlier this month, with Starmer announcing an ambition to build ‘up to’ 12 new nuclear-powered attack submarines.

In the Strategic Defence Review, Sir Keir Starmer promised ‘up to’ 12 new attack-submarines (Photo: Andy Buchanan/WPA Pool/Getty)

The Nato country official said that nations in the alliance needed to “think about our own protocols and who does what and when” in cases where vessels stray into our waters. “Can you actually stop the vessels moving, can you board? In extremis, if a vessel is tampering with critical infrastructure, could you sink it?”

The intent to get to grip with these issues was demonstrated on Friday when the UK joined with 13 other European countries to put out a statement on Russia’s “destabilising” shadow fleet.

“If vessels fail to fly a valid flag in the Baltic Sea and the North Sea, we will take appropriate action within international law,” it warned.

The statement promised a “coordinated approach by our national authorities to address Russia’s shadow fleet”. It added: “We intend to compile a common set of guidelines in line with international law to promote responsible behaviour at sea, strengthen compliance with international law, and ensure transparency across maritime operations.”

That brings us to the fighter jet escort which Russia scrambled for the Jaguar last month. The official from the Nato power said it showed “what a lifeline that shadow fleet is to Russia- they have to protect it in any way they can”.

But it also raised the nerve-jangling possibility of a military entanglement between Russia and Nato involving a tanker.

The official went on: “How far would [Russia] be ready to go? They are testing how far we’re ready to go.

“That’s the reality at the moment – we’re testing each other.”

On the chances of a clash with Russia, they said: “There is a risk.”