Russia’s shadow tanker fleet has at least tripled since the 2022 invasion. US-EU sanctions are steadily blacklisting hundreds of ships, pushing up the cost of evasion and shrinking safe harbours. Operators are masking ownership through shell firms, swapping flags and
IDs, and darkening AIS signals to stay ahead. Any charterer, insurer or financier dealing with these vessels now faces sharply higher legal, financial and operational risk.
Russia’s slice of this underground market has grown from fewer than 100 tankers in early 2022 to somewhere between 300 and 600 by early 2025, depending on the counting method. Roughly 40 percent of those hulls came from EU sellers, owners of offloading vessels near or beyond their mid-life survey.
Age is the hidden hazard. Through constant flag-hopping, name changes and shellcompany swaps, many shadow-fleet tankers present fresh paperwork while hiding their build year and maintenance record. Unless a counterparty runs a deep hullhistory search (matching every prior IMO number), the vessel can look serviceable when, in fact, its steel is two-plus decades old and classification may have lapsed. The typical Russian shadow-fleet tanker is 20–25 years old, well above the global crude-tanker average of 13 years. Some are well beyond commercial lifespan: the two Volgoneft river-sea tankers that ruptured in the December 2024 Kerch Strait spill were built in 1969 and 1973.
Globally, most analysts now track roughly 1,300–1,400 vessels in the shadow fleet—about half of them oil tankers. Russia accounts for the largest single tranche. The remainder serve Iranian, Venezuelan, and other grey-market trades, but all rely on the same playbook of AIS silence, flag-hopping, opaque ownership, and non-IG insurance.
In Russia’s case, the shadow fleet now plays two roles: it still ferries sanctioned crude for profit, yet – as the incidents detailed below show – it also functions as a low-cost instrument of grey-zone pressure, using AIS-dark passages, anchor drags and near-groundings to inject uncertainty into strategically sensitive waters.
2025 Sanctions Blitz: Where We Stand
On 10 January 2025, the U.S. Treasury added 183 tankers to its sanctions blacklist (SDN list) and simultaneously targeted Gazprom Neft and Surgutneftegas – scrubbing an estimated 17 million tons of cargo-carrying capacity (measured in deadweight tonnage, or DWT) from mainstream trade overnight.
Six weeks later, on 24 February, Brussels issued its 16ᵗʰ sanctions package, naming 74 more hulls – many sailing under Gabonese, Cameroonian, or Palauan flags – and lifting the EU sanctions roster to 153 vessels while creating a new offence that makes it punishable to “facilitate an unsafe or uninsured tanker,” thereby pulling traders, bunker suppliers, and port agents into the sanctions chain.
London followed on 14 March: the U.K.’s Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation listed another 29 tankers, a move aimed squarely at owners who believed they could trade safely by dodging EU ports. By mid-March, after overlaps were removed, independent trackers counted roughly two hundred Russian-linked tankers under Western restrictions.
Momentum did not slow. On 20 May 2025, the EU adopted its 17ᵗʰ package and black-listed a further 189 tankers. Once duplicate names and nonRussian dark-fleet vessels are filtered out, the combined U.S., EU, and U.K. measures now cover about 270 distinct tankers that regularly lift Russian crude, nearly triple the number captured in January and representing roughly twenty-five million DWT of capacity pushed to the margins in less than five months.
How the Shadow Fleet Disguises Its Moves
Tankers operating in the shadow fleet rely on a consistent set of evasion techniques to avoid scrutiny and circumvent sanctions. The first tactic is AIS manipulation. Crews may change the vessel’s self-reported type from “oil tanker” to a less regulated category, or disable the transponder entirely while transiting sensitive choke points such as Ceuta or the Strait of Hormuz—reactivating it only once offshore. In some cases, vessels transmit false static positions, showing themselves as anchored while actually underway toward a mid-sea transfer point.
Frequent changes to a ship’s name and flag are also common. A tanker might switch from a Russian to a Liberian registry within days, often repainting identifiers while in port. These changes are quickly reflected in digital certificates, which are typically accepted at face value by port-state authorities.
Ownership structures are equally fluid. A single vessel may be passed between multiple front companies over the course of a year—often registered in jurisdictions such as the Seychelles, Sharjah, or the Marshall Islands. These transactions are usually recorded at nominal prices, obscuring the identity of the beneficial owner behind layers of nominee directors.
Cargo concealment is the final step. Offshore transfers near Lomé, Ceuta, or Kandla often blend Russian, Iranian, and Venezuelan crude into mixed cargoes labelled as generic fuel oil. This makes origin tracing difficult and hampers the enforcement of sanctions and price caps. Because these tactics are often combined—AIS spoofing, flag and name changes, shell ownership, and blended cargo—regulators increasingly treat any vessel with rapidly shifting identifiers as high risk. Enforcement has shifted from individual inspections to broader vessel blacklists based on behavioral patterns.
Waves of sanctions now sweep hundreds of tankers onto blacklists in a single stroke, and commercial satellites record every AIS blink, flag-swap, and mid-ocean transfer almost as fast as they happen. The operating space that once let ageing, uninsured ships move sanctioned cargo unseen is shrinking by the day. For charterers and cargo owners, the choice is stark. Fuse live sanctions feeds, behaviour-based analytics, and verifiable P&I checks into voyage planning—and keep cargo moving with confidence—or risk footing the bill for the next Kerch-scale disaster, complete with detentions, clean-up costs, and reputational harm. The age of shadows is closing; only transparent, data-literate operators will prosper in what comes next.
Source: Dryad Global
https://www.dryadglobal.com/e3t/Ctc/T8+113/czsyq04/VXfs6P3YwPxZW87vq_b1vxD4SW6mk3Cf5ysRwBN8rPF5s3qgz0W7lCdLW6lZ3pmW51KJhv4ZHzG2W4qrTQp29yd90W98TZ4N3wghWLW67dzFC1gJd-lV5Fl8_93dKs8W29Bvd_2sr89vVTl0mW999MtHW2pCBlJ76cd1XW7Rm5TF5DMSggW9krrlg7wCcN9W6ZD_2N7Pd7fXW8gMYr02cK4pBMBT13Vbb5p_VRsG9d7fgYCKW3Dg1069hPZFBW6LY7mV7vSVlNW7J4PVz8W2G3YW4DJW977kqPzZW6WxMFm4KWV-rW6jvGMR6gNt5HW64bDKt9hVBQ5N5VNbfcP6WR4N9m2T0WDdpvcW24kRq-79fjJ9dvf7LY04