Russia is increasingly taking its so-called The shadow fleet - a network of old and obscurely owned tankers, built after 2022 to circumvent Western sanctions - is registered directly under the Russian flag. According to analysts, this is a strategic turn: the Kremlin is moving towards an open denial of responsibility for ships transporting oil.
The shadow fleet appeared after the G7 and Australia imposed a price ceiling on Russian oil in December 2022, forcing Moscow to assemble ships independent of the West. packaging, financing and flag. For the purpose of the identification of the ownership and production of cargo, the operators have to deal with the calculation of "ship-to-ship" cargo transfers, oil blending, GPS signal jamming, transponder deactivation and complex corporate schemes.
The trend of vessels flying the Russian flag has increased this year - due to the increasing number of operations by Western countries meet such ships. According to Ukrainian intelligence, about 80 tankers are planned for Russian registration, and the Russian Maritime Register of Shipping is actively preparing them. According to current data, in the first quarter of 2026, 82 tankers were already operating under the Russian flag - 11.7% of the entire fleet exporting Russian oil by sea, an almost fourfold increase compared to the previous period.
In June alone, Lloyd's List reported a change of flag on 17 ships, and from June 2025 alone, the number exceeded 40. In one case, a ship demonstratively before the Russians the identity between Iceland and Scotland, apparently to deter American invasion - a maneuver that in the country is not considered to prevent confiscation.
According to the Atlantic Council, the official flag deprives ships of the ambiguity of the "flag of convenience" and gives European countries a stronger legal basis for action.
The threat already goes beyond sanctions evasion. A report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies from early July concluded that it was "highly likely" Russia to use tankers as launch pads for drones over Europe - between 2024 and 2026, with over 140 suspicious incursions recorded near sensitive sites in Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Great Britain and Denmark, including the closure of Copenhagen airport in September 2025.
This also leads to reciprocal measures. On July 7, Ukrainian drones hit eight tankers from the shadowy fleet transporting fuel to occupied Crimea.
A serious challenge for the Russian BMC will now be to protect the world-traveling tankers for which they are now officially responsible.