European authorities have warned that deceptive behaviour by Russia’s shadow fleet, including manipulating location signals and sailing under flags of convenience, is endangering maritime safety.
All vessels are expected to provide accurate and uninterrupted location data via global navigation satellite systems, other than in exceptional circumstances, but falsifying such signals has become a widespread practice among ships carrying sanctioned goods.
A group of 14 governments representing countries with Baltic and North Sea coastlines issued an open letter this week saying they are facing “new emerging safety situations” due to these practices.
“These disturbances, originating from the Russian Federation, degrade the safety of international shipping,” said the letter, addressed to the international maritime community. “All vessels are at risk.”
National authorities should ensure vessels “strictly comply with applicable international law”, said the group, which comprises Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Sweden and the UK.
Campaign groups have long warned that tankers carrying Russian oil pose a serious environmental threat, particularly in the Baltic Sea.
Greenpeace found in late 2024 that Russian crude tanker traffic along Germany’s hazardous Baltic coast had risen by 70% since the start of 2021, with many ageing vessels operating without sufficient insurance.
The open letter also emphasised that vessels must maintain valid insurance and other financial documentation, and said vessels must only sail under the flag of one state.
Those that use multiple flags and switch “according to convenience… may be treated as a ship without nationality”, it said. This practice was identified as a “growing trend” in a December paper by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (Crea), a Helsinki-based think tank.
Though the letter focuses on northern Europe, investigations have found the same networks of vessels have often been used to transport sanctioned oil from other countries, notably Iran and Venezuela.
It called for national authorities to recognise location spoofing as a threat to maritime security, to ensure vessels have adequate tools to operate safely during outages, and to cooperate on developing alternative navigation systems that can be used in the event of disruption.
EU sanctions crackdown
The warning comes amid concerted efforts within the EU to crack down on Russia’s ability to generate revenue from oil sales.
On January 26, the European Council approved a ban on imports of Russian pipeline gas and LNG into any member state, which will start to apply six weeks after the regulation enters into force.
Though there is a transition period for existing contracts, LNG imports are fully banned from the start of 2027, and pipeline gas from September the same year. Non-compliance is punishable with penalties of at least €40mn or 3.5% of a company’s worldwide annual turnover.
Slovakia and Hungary voted against the ban and have since threatened legal action against the EU.
A Crea report in May last year said the two countries had imported 32 billion cubic metres of Russian gas since its invasion of Ukraine, with an estimated value of €20bn.
In Hungary’s case, it said imports via the TurkStream pipeline had “significantly ramped up… transforming Hungary into a strategic Kremlin-backed gas hub for Central and Southeast Europe”.
A separate EU ban on Russian-origin oil products has also taken effect this month.
From January 21, buyers of refined products have been required to show they were not produced from Russian crude oil, even when imported from a country not subject to sanctions.
The measures were designed to close what campaign groups described as a “loophole” in the bloc’s sanctions regime, pointing out refineries in India and Turkey that were importing large volumes of Russian crude and shipping refined products to Europe.
Maritime intelligence company Vortexa reported on January 16 that India and Turkey had reduced the share of Russian crude in their intake from 35% in November to 20% in the first half of this month.
“As expected, the pullback is strongest at ports regularly exporting products to the EU,” it said. “Replacement crude has been coming from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and the US as refiners manage compliance risk ahead of the deadline.”
Vortexa noted that there are uncertainties around how the ban will be interpreted, however.
Bloomberg said in December that India’s Jamnagar refinery complex was continuing to import Russian crude while exporting to Europe.
But its operating company, Reliance Industries, said its export-focused refinery had stopped receiving shipments in November, while Russian imports were being channelled to a refinery that supplies the domestic market.
Vortexa’s report said that compliance with the ban will depend on whether the EU treats these refineries as one installation or if terminal-level segregation is accepted.
