With reports swirling that the European Union is contemplating seizing ageing substandard shadow tanker tonnage transiting through the Baltic, Alexey Zhuravlev (pictured), first deputy chairman of Russia’s State Duma Committee on Defence, has vowed retaliation.
European news organisation Politico reported earlier this week that the EU was discussing apprehending shadow tankers leaving Russia and heading through the Baltic following a spate of attacks on subsea infrastructure in the region carried out by merchant ships, and growing concern about accidents arising from the swathe of vintage tonnage passing through the area.
Data from maritime risk analytics firm Windward shows more than 1,200 shadow fleet or related vessels that either did a dark activity or port call in the Baltic ports of Russia during the last 180 days, with Ami Daniel, Windward’s CEO, suggesting most of these shops could be deemed a safety or security risk.
The plans under discussion within the European Union risk contravening freedom of navigation rules established under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), and the Politico report has attracted swift condemnation in Russia.
“Any attack on our carriers can be regarded as an attack on our territory, even if the vessel is under a foreign flag,” Zhuravlev wrote in a post on Telegram, warning of “retaliatory measures” in the form of boarding – and even attacking – Western ships.
Last week, the Danish Maritime Authority announced that it will start carrying out port state controls on tankers it deems high risk who anchor off Skagen in the far north of the country, a popular anchorage. Ships found with safety defects or not having the right papers or insurance risk being detained.
Denmark has been leading littoral states around the Baltic in discussing ways to clamp down on ageing tankers carrying Russian oil, following a number of accidents and the severing of cables in the region.
Russia sends about a third of its seaborne oil exports through the Danish straits with around one in three of these ships having unknown insurance. Today, some 175 tankers laden with Russian oil transit the Baltic each month, according to Craig Kennedy who runs the Navigating Russia substack.
The number of vessels hit by sanctions surpassed 1,000 late last year with data from S&P Global Market Intelligence showing that more 800 of these ships do not have confirmed insurance. Moreover, the average age of sanctioned ships – 21 years – is some eight years older than the global average, adding to growing concern that the sprawling so-called shadow fleet could lead to multiple costly environmental catastrophes.
Last September, Danish authorities banned 27 Russian-linked ships from calling at local ports or anchorages.
In December, Denmark was among nine European nations around the Baltic and the North Sea to start demanding insurance details from Russian-linked ships passing through their waters
Seabed gas pipelines, power cables and fiber optic cables have all been attacked – likely by merchant ships dragging their anchors – in recent months across the Baltic, forcing NATO to establish Baltic Sentry, a naval protection operation.
Baltic Sentry involves a range of assets, including frigates, submarines, maritime patrol aircraft, and drones.
Last month, the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) activated an advanced UK-led reaction system to track potential threats to undersea infrastructure and monitor the Russian shadow fleet. The JEF is a UK-led Northern European multinational military partnership. The naval operation named Nordic Warden harnesses AI to assess data from a range of sources, including the Automatic Identification System (AIS) ships use to broadcast their position, to calculate the risk posed by each vessel entering areas of interest.
Specific vessels identified as being part of Russia’s shadow fleet have been registered into the system so they can be closely monitored when approaching key areas of interest.
If a potential risk is assessed, the system will monitor the suspicious vessel in real-time and immediately send out a warning, which will be shared with JEF participant nations as well as NATO allies including Denmark.
22 areas of interest – including parts of the English Channel, North Sea, Kattegat, and Baltic Sea, are currently being monitored from the JEF’s operational headquarters in the UK, where personnel from all 10 JEF nations work side by side.
A joint statement from the heads of state or government of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Sweden last month noted: “Russia’s use of the so-called shadow fleet poses a particular threat to the maritime and environmental security in the Baltic Sea region and globally. This reprehensible practice also threatens the integrity of undersea infrastructure, increases risks connected to sea-dumped chemical munitions, and significantly supports funding of Russia’s illegal war of aggression against Ukraine.”
