Skip to content

All the news that matters, in plain English.

Latest
  1. Anti-migrant activist Daniel Thomas arrested on suspicion of criminal damage after Channel dinghy slashing
  2. US cities take on the FCC over its plan to override local broadband rules
  3. Glasgow City Council to sack and rehire more than 20,000 staff in pay row
  4. Susan Sarandon and Hannah Einbinder among about 100 arrested at Netanyahu UN protest
  5. Finnish president Stubb pleads with Musk to let Ukraine use Starlink against Russian missile launchers
  6. Bank of England rate-setters warn of 'sparks in the tinderbox' as hike bets grow
  7. US Coast Guard suspends search for Carnival Panorama passenger Thomas Gigler
  8. Venezuela's Rodríguez promises elections in UNGA debut but gives no date

World

Crackdown halves Russia's false-flagged shadow fleet as tankers flee to Russian registry

European navies have more than halved the number of Russia's shadow-fleet tankers sailing under false flags, a new CREA report says — but the vessels are flocking to the Russian flag registry instead.

By Sarah Whitfield · · 2 min read

Europe’s crackdown on Russia’s “shadow fleet” of sanctions-dodging oil tankers has more than halved the number of false-flagged vessels, according to a new report, published on 25 September and reported by the Financial Times, from the Helsinki-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA).

Detentions by Western navies drove false-flagged vessels down from a peak of 101 in October 2025 to 45 by the end of June 2026, CREA said. Windward AI said at least 23 false-flagged shadow fleet ships had been detained since December 2024, and that France, the UK and Belgium used UN Convention on the Law of the Sea provisions to seize 13 ships in the first half of 2026.

With open registries tightening under Western pressure — Barbados and Palau removed all sanctioned shadow vessels, while Panama cut its sanctioned shadow registrations by almost two-thirds since May 2025 — tankers fled to the Russian flag registry. Some 107 vessels joined it since January 2025, growing it 36% from 280 vessels to 382 by end-June 2026, CREA said. Eighty-seven per cent of the new entries were already under sanctions when they joined.

“The Russian flag registry has become a one-way refuge for sanctioned vessels,” said the CREA report’s lead author, Luke Wickenden. For every ship that leaves, roughly nine enter, he said. Monthly additions fell from a peak of 25 in December 2025 to three in June 2026 after Russia imposed an age limit for new registrations.

Most recently, on 30 August, an EU naval mission in the Mediterranean boarded the tanker MV Sun on suspicion of belonging to the shadow fleet.

Sources

More on this topic: all World stories

Get Flip News by email

This opens your email app — we add you manually. No account, no spam, no third parties.