Representatives of Russian paramilitary groups are present on the tankers of the Russian ‘shadow’ fleet. In particular, these vessels carry individuals in uniform who do not perform the duties of crew members but hold a certain degree of authority on board, raising suspicions about their links to paramilitary structures or the Russian Federation’s special services.
Many of them are former military personnel, including veterans of Chechnya and Syria. Their tasks are to ensure that the vessel does not deviate from its course, even against the captain’s orders or NATO requirements, to provide daily reports on the vessel’s condition and the crew’s behaviour, and to monitor the sailors’ conversations and their contacts. This system allows Russia to use foreign sailors on voyages of ‘shadow fleet’ vessels, ensuring control through a few of its own citizens.
Russia’s ‘shadow’ fleet consists of a group of around 1,500 obsolete tankers with an opaque ownership structure, which the Kremlin uses to export Russian oil in circumvention of EU and US sanctions. To cut off this source of war funding, the EU is constantly updating its sanctions packages, adding dozens of such vessels to blacklists. The sanctions target not only the tankers themselves but also the foreign operating companies.
European countries are also deploying naval forces to inspect and detain tankers
from the ‘shadow’ fleet at sea. In particular, in September 2025, France seized the tanker ‘Boracay’. It later emerged that two agents of the Russian secret services were on board. They were employed by the private Russian company ‘Moran Security Group’. The men had been tasked with providing security for the vessel, monitoring the crew and gathering intelligence. ‘Boracay’ has been linked to drone flights in Denmark in 2025, particularly over major airports and military installations, as well as to a number of airspace violations in European countries.
For Europe, the activities of the ‘shadow fleet’ only serve to undermine the effectiveness of sanctions-based hybrid pressure, where commercial activities are used to carry out sabotage and reconnaissance operations. Therefore, the ‘shadow fleet’ should be viewed not merely as a matter of collective security for the EU and NATO.