Since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine, on February 24, 2022, Russia has been subject to numerous economic and diplomatic sanctions, imposed by organizations and countries around the world, in order to punish the aggressor country and try to undermine its ability to continue with the conflict. Among the agencies that have taken measures in this regard is the European Union, which has sanctioned about 2,400 people and entities.
Despite the numerous measures taken by the international community against Russia, the truth is that its effectiveness has proven limited. Moscow has managed to avoid much of these sanctions by resorting to mechanisms such as the known ‘fleet in the shadow’, made up of hundreds of boats that under different flags have allowed it to market its oil, military material, and even those goods that are not allowed to access through common roads, among other aspects.
The shadow fleet has remained active for years, although its presence in the waters around the world has intensified following the war in Ukraine and the sanctions imposed as a consequence of it. According to Associated Press, the tankers who make up this fleet are second-hand bought by opaque entities domiciled in countries that do not apply sanctions, such as the United Arab Emirates. These vessels manage to avoid controls by avoiding approaching Western ports. However, new investigation has revealed that part of these could provide from European countries.
Ships with European origin
According to the project Follow the Money, at least a third of the vessels that make up the ghost fleet, that is, about 230 oil tankers that the Kyiv School of Economics Independent Institute (KSE) estimates that they are still active, would have belonged to shipowners from Western countries. These shipping companies sold the boats to Russia for an unusually elevated price, getting to pocket, as the aforementioned medium points out, a total of 6,000 million dollars by tankers that would originally have been sold as scrap.
In this business, Greek companies would be mostly involved, although British, German, and Norwegian companies have also been identified. Thus, it is speculated that, since the beginning of the conflict, Moscow would have generated more than 800,000 million euros with fleet activity in the shadow, despite the fact that, at the end of 2023, the European Union banned the direct sale of boats to Russian companies and the G7 countries chose to limit the price of Russian oil in late 2022.
