Although the vessel sports the Panamanian flag, German authorities have blamed Russia for the incident.
“Russia is endangering our European security not only with its illegal war of aggression against Ukraine, but also with severed cables, displaced border buoys, disinformation campaigns, GPS jammers and, as we have seen, dilapidated oil tankers,” the German foreign minister said in a statement.
Last December, the European Union said it was working on measures including sanctions to target “Russia’s shadow fleet, which threatens security and the environment, while funding Russia’s war budget”.
The European bloc’s remarks came after undersea cables in the Baltic Sea were damaged by a suspected vessel, which the EU believes was part of Russia’s shadow fleet.
The move was a further step taken by Western countries to hit the Kremlin’s oil industry in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Since tougher embargo measures were put in place to halt Russia from exporting oil, Moscow is believed to be using ships with unclear ownership to transport goods – namely oil – across the globe.
As reported by the Atlantic Council, a US-based think tank, Russia is “instrumentalising the dark fleet, using it especially as a primary conveyor of oil exports”.
The shadow fleet, or dark fleet, is the name given to ageing ships that sail “without the industry’s standard Western insurance, have opaque ownership, frequently change their names and flag registrations, and generally operate outside maritime regulations”, according to the Atlantic Council.
The latest incident in the Baltic Sea comes as Washington and London joined efforts to directly sanction energy companies Gazprom Neft and Surgutneftegas.
UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy said the move to weaken Russian oil companies would “drain Russia’s war chest,” adding that funds taken “from Putin’s hands helps save Ukrainian lives”.
But Gazprom Neft slammed the sanctions as “baseless” and “illegitimate”, as reported by Russian state news agencies.
Also on Friday, the US Department of the Treasury said it had sanctioned 183 vessels that are “part of the shadow fleet as well as oil tankers owned by Russia-based fleet operators”.
