Defense Intelligence identifies at least 238 vessels from russian oil "shadow fleet"

Russia is circumventing sanctions with the help of 238 vessels that transport oil around the world.

The Defense Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine has reported this.

The restriction on russian oil products has been in effect since 2022, but now russia is trading using a "shadow fleet" of tankers under foreign flags. The companies that own such tankers are based in Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore or Cyprus.

According to the Defense Intelligence, a total of 17% of the world's oil tanker fleet is in the shadows. However, these are thousands of vessels. They are mostly old, poorly maintained, often break down and leave oil stains. The maximum carrying capacity of the shadow fleet is over 100 million tons.

The "owners" of such tankers carefully conceal the origin of the cargo, so they often do not order pilotage services in dangerous areas. Therefore, old ships without outside help risk accidents on busy and narrow international transport routes. Since February 2022, more than 50 incidents involving shadow tankers have already been recorded from the Danish Straits to Malaysia. All this harms the ecology of coastal countries.

The Defense Intelligence scouts have established the data of 238 shadow tankers from the russian fleet.

As the Ukrainian News agency earlier reported, satellite images recorded at least nine cases when russian ships of the "shadow fleet" spilled oil in the ocean. There may be more russian tankers polluting the ocean.

The Defense Intelligence has published a list of captains of sea vessels transporting stolen Ukrainian grain.