By Justine Dukmedjian.
On Wednesday, January 15th, 2025, a French maritime patrol aircraft operating on behalf of NATO encountered Russian intimidation. This occurred while conducting surveillance in international airspace over the Baltic Sea, monitoring the presence of the Russian so-called “ghost fleet.” [1] The intimidation took the form of an S400 ground-to-air defense system radar locking onto the French military aircraft [2]. Sebastien Lecornu, the French Defence Minister, and other officials denounced Russia’s actions [3].
The presence of the Ghost Fleet has increasingly alarmed Western countries in the Ukraine – Russia war in the past thirty-five months. The shadow fleet is used to circumvent Western bans on Russian oil exports to bankroll the country and its pursuit of the war. But it is not its only utility: experts say Russia uses the fleet of decaying, flag-hoping ships of dubious ownership to run covert ops aiming at destabilising the West and retaliating against its support to Ukraine [4] [5] [6]. Amongst other things, the shadow fleet is rumored to have damaged some submarine cables, the latest being the electricity cable running between Finland and Estonia [7]. On December 26, 2024, Finnish authorities reported that the anchor from the Eagle S, a tanker registered in the Cook Islands, might have damaged the Estlink 2 cable. Said cable had been disconnected the previous day. Authorities suspected that the Eagle S was part of the Ghost Fleet, raising questions about whether the damage was an accident or an intentional act of sabotage Robin Lardot, director of Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation seems to lean for the latter option, as he announced “From our side we are investigating grave sabotage.” [8].
Russia did not invent the Dark Fleet. In fact, due to Western sanctions piling up against them in the past years, countries like Iran and Venezuela started to develop their shadow fleet of vessels. They use them to circumvent the sanctions and continue to finance their activities (like the Iranian nuclear program) [9]. The ongoing war in Ukraine is notable for the scale and prevalence of the newly incorporated Russian vessels within the already-established shadow fleet. According to a recent report from Windward Maritime AI, in collaboration with Vortexa, it is estimated that the Russian fleet now comprises approximately 1,300 dark vessels—more than double the 600 ships recorded during the initial months of the conflict.This surge in the number of shadow vessels sailing the seas indicates that Russia has proven itself adept at circumventing the sanctions. The Windward typology helps us understand how they did so: they used a mix of grey and dark fleets. Windward defines a “grey fleet” as a new phenomenon stemming from the beginning of the war in 2022. Not long after, Russia started establishing companies overseas to obscure the vessel’s origins and ownership. That way, they appear law-abiding and not targeted by sanctions [11]… They also fly flags frequently (meaning they regularly change the country they fly the flag of [12]) to cover their tracks further. Windward Maritime AI estimates that there are around 1,000 of these ships worldwide. For Windward Maritime AI, the actual “dark fleet” does not bother with trying to appear law-abiding. Instead, it dissimulates itself by using deceptive shipping practices (like altering the vessel’s identity or falsifying documentation) [13].
This ghost fleet (we define the ghost fleet as the reunion of the grey and dark fleet) is used primarily to smuggle oil from Russia to its clients. Indeed, in December 2022, a coalition of countries comprising, amongst others, members of the G7 and the EU decided to impose a price cap on Russian oil. Western shipping and insurance companies were barred from getting involved with crude exports exceeding the price of $60 per barrel before the aforementioned countries’ pledge to stop using Russian oil came into effect [14]. This was intended to deal a devastating blow to Russia’s economy. Yet, the actual result revealed itself to be very far from theory since Russia started to trade oil with newfound customers through the ghost fleet – mainly China, Turkey, and India. Russia showed resilience against oil sanctions from the UK and US Treasury, prompting the two powers to impose new restrictions on its oil sector on January 10, 2025.
The state of disrepair of the grey and dark vessels themselves is caused by the risks inherent to operating them. They are so great that Russia refuses to use new vessels and instead uses old ones. According to Windward, in 2024, 68 % of the dark vessels were more than fifteen years old – rising to 73 % when it comes to the grey ones. Still, according to Windward, the average age of the ships departing the port of Kaliningrad (Baltic Sea) is thirty years old [16]. These ships are also often uninsured [17] and lack repair. All of that makes for serious environmental risks, as shown by the incident that occurred near the German island of Rügen on January 10th, 2025 [18]. At that date, the Eventin, a ship that departed from Russia and is believed to be a ghost vessel, lost control of its commands in the Baltic Sea while carrying nearly 100,000 tons of oil (supposedly from Russian wells). Germany was still trying to tow it on the 11th to avoid an oil spill [19].
To wrap up:
- According to Windward, the Ghost Fleet mainly transports three substances: crude oil, oil, and chemicals. These comprise three subclasses (shared between the grey and dark ships): crude oil tankers, oil product tankers, and oil and chemicals tankers.
The diversity of tankers certainly indicates how much the covert oil business is thriving for Russia.
- Most of the ghost ships also fly the flags of the same countries. Panama is the favorite flag of both the greys and the darks, while Liberia is the second favorite.
Those countries are considered “flag-of-convenience” ones, meaning they are not concerned with who flies their colours. Indeed, most vessels leaving Russian ports in the Baltic Sea have Liberia as a flag State… [22].
- The preferred destinations of the grey fleet were India and China. India and China inverted their preferences regarding the dark fleet, but Turkey remained third.
This clearly shows that Western sanctions have failed to impede Russia’s oil business—instead, it appears to be flourishing in Asia.
- Finally, engaging with those ships is always risky, as it poses the threat of Russia reacting and escalating in the latent conflict that opposes it to the West.
Indeed, the West has engaged in a perilous dance with Russia since February 2022 to avoid escalation. In the almost three years since the beginning of the Conflict, Western countries have had to carefully balance their desire to stand against what they perceive as a menacing enemy and their need to avoid entering a direct conflict. Engaging the Russian fleet is always risky, even in case of sabotage or any illegal activity suspicion. Russia could decide to react strongly, thus leading to escalation.
Ultimately, Russia’s shadow fleet is a serious security and environmental threat to Western countries. The number of ships composing the fleet also reflects Russia’s ability to quickly be back on its feet after the issuing of the Western sanctions on oil by striking strong commercial partnerships with countries that were not, before the War, their clients of choice. This is also a source of serious concern for Western countries, as the initial objective of the sanctions (stopping the war and dissuading Russia from trying again) painfully fell flat, illustrating, in fine, probably the little effectiveness these sanctions have in reality.
Edited by Justine Peries.
References
[1] [2] [3] Reuters, January, 17th, 2025, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/french-maritime-patrol-aircraft-was-target-russian-intimidation-minister-says-2025-01-17/.
[4] [14] [21] Braw, Elisabeth, Russia’s growing dark fleet: Risks for the global maritime order, January, 11th, 2024,
[5] [9] [10] [11] [13] [16] [21] [22] Windward, Updated: Illuminating Russia’s Shadow Fleet, https://windward.ai/knowledge-base/illuminating-russias-shadow-fleet/.
[6] [7] [8] Smith, Coachella, Finland investigates Russia’s ‘shadow fleet’ ship after cable damage, BBC, December, 26th, 2024,
[12] Windward, Flag Hopping,
[15] Verma, Nidhi, Aizhu, Chen, Aizhu, Liu, Siyi Liu and Tan, Florence Tougher US sanctions to curb Russian oil supply to China and India, Reuters, January, 12th, 2025,
[17] [18] [19] Edwards, Christian, Germany tows disabled Russian ‘shadow fleet’ tanker adrift in Baltic Sea, CNN, January, 11th, 2025, https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/11/europe/germany-russia-shadow-fleet-tanker-intl/index.html#:~:text=Germany%20is%20working%20 to%20 secure,control%20in%20the%20Baltic%20Sea.
[Cover Image] Photo by Alexander Bobrov, https://www.pexels.com/fr-fr/chercher/oil%20tanker/ .
Licensed under Pexels (https://www.pexels.com/fr-fr/).
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