Shadow fleet tankers flock back to being flagged as Russian, creating more headaches for EU states

As European coastal states detain more vessels sailing under false flags and pressure mounts on flag-of-convenience registries to remove sanctioned tonnage, Russia itself is increasingly becoming the destination of last resort for the oil trade’s shadow fleet. A new analysis published on Friday (25 September) by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) found that 107 vessels joined Russia’s flag registry between January 2025 and June 2026, representing a 36 percent increase. The growth peaked in December 2025, when 25 vessels were added in a single month. Of the 107 vessels, 93 (87 percent) were already under sanctions, while 56 percent had previously operated under a false flag. The development reflects an evolving enforcement dynamic. Sanctions alone have not stopped many shadow-fleet vessels from operating. Instead, detentions and pressure on the registries that provide the vessels with flags have forced operators to repeatedly change their arrangements. As open registries come under increasing diplomatic pressure to remove sanctioned Russian-linked vessels, ships are moving between flags, adopting fraudulent ones or, increasingly, registering directly with Russia. “The fleet keeps adapting, so enforcement is often responding to its latest move,” research fellow at the Centre for Finance and Security at the Royal United Services Institute, Gonzalo Saiz Erausquin told EUobserver, describing the development as a growing concern for European countries seeking to restrict Russia’s oil revenues. The shift is already visible among major open registries. Barbados, Palau and Panama Barbados and Palau have cleared their registries of sanctioned vessels, while Panama has reduced its number of sanctioned vessels by almost two-thirds from a peak in May 2025. The world’s largest ship registries have also established the Registry Information Sharing Compact (RISC), a shared database intended to combat flag-hopping and other forms of sanctions circumvention. But removing vessels from one registry does not make them disappear. Instead, they can migrate to registries with weaker oversight or greater opacity. By June 2026, 46 unique vessels previously registered under Comoros or Gambia had joined Russia’s registry. Others have moved to Sierra Leone and Equatorial Guinea, while some continue to operate without a recognised flag.The result is a cycle in which vessels move from one jurisdiction to another as enforcement pressure changes. "Most of the fleet is under sanctions but sanctions themselves do not stop them from sailing," said Saiz Erausquin. A 'game of whack-a-mole' “Russia’s ‘shadow’ fleet is moving in waves from one open flag registry to the next,” said Luke Wickenden, the report’s main author and an energy analyst at CREA. “As flag registries come under pressure to expel sanctioned Russian ‘shadow’ vessels, the vessels hop between flags, sometimes sailing under fraudulent flags that leave them vulnerable to detention, before settling under the Russian registry as a final safe haven.”