Recently, the issue of staffing the Russian “shadow” tanker fleet has begun to receive some attention, but its main focus is on business directly related to the Kremlin’s oil empire.
At the same time, several structures that are daughters of powerful global maritime corporations are still under Russian jurisdiction, and it is worth understanding how their activities are comparable to the sanctions regime and shipping safety, including in the dimension of oil transportation.
It is worth starting with the Russian daughter of such a global structure as “CMA CGM”, as one of the largest shipping corporations in the world, owned by Marseille billionaire Rodolphe Saadé, who inherited it from his father Jacques Saadé, who transferred his commercial activities to France from Lebanon half a century ago.
Rodolphe Saadé, CMA CGM director general.
Rodolphe Saadé is a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor and a member of the US Chamber of Commerce, his corporation pays great attention to PR and sponsorship of sports processes, including the Tour de France and the recent Olympics in Paris.
The basis of “CMA CGM”’s activities, as well as that of another global structure “Delmas Shipping”, headquartered in Le Havre, acquired by it twenty years ago, is maritime container transportation, and formally the trade lines of this corporation, including the Black Sea and Baltic, do not include Russian ports.
However, an “interesting coincidence” recently surfaced when the manager of the Georgian office of “CMA CGM”, Gogi Churkveidze, simultaneously headed the Azerbaijani “Aegis Voyage Shipmanagement” from Sumgait, which was noted as the ISM manager of the sanctioned tanker “Luna”, IMO number 9258868 under the flag of Vietnam.
This vessel in January 2025 exported 100 thousand tons of ‘Urals’ oil worth $ 38.7 million from the Russian port of Ust-Luga through the mediation of the Russian-controlled company from the UAE “Fuel and Oil Dynamics FZE”.
Therefore, it is necessary to more carefully examine the activities of the Russian subsidiary of the “CMA CGM” corporation, the St. Petersburg company LLC С “MA SHIPS RUS”, tax number 7840061499 with a director like Roman Baranets. This crewing structure, founded by “СMA SHIPS SINGAPORE PTE. LTD” from Singapore and the Russian LLC “СMA СGM RUS”, was formed in 2017 and has since had a license in Russia for the employment of seafarers 20117781343.
This structure, with an office in the “Stealth” business center, has not faced any obstacles in doing business from the Russian authorities over the past few years, and for 2024 it declared a net profit of 35.4 million rubles.
However, “CMA CGM” has been operating in Russia much longer, since the beginning of the 21st century, in particular through the above-mentioned LLC С “MA СGM RUS”, tax code 7705563140, which declares its functionality in the field of various transportations, is founded by the French “CMA CGM Agencies World wide”, and its director is Mikhail Pochtarev.
Mr. Pochtarev is a classic “multi-director”, as he is followed by five more companies, apparently of different beneficiaries, the most notable of which is the Moscow LLC “AIRBUS RUS”, tax code 7706644169, that is, the Russian daughter of the French corporation “Airbus”.
But his permanent directorship in the Russian structures of “CMA CGM” began quite a long time ago, when in 2009 it was reported that the then director of the Russian branch of CMA Vladimir Glikson would be replaced by the Norwegian Jesper Pedersen, and that “during the transition period, Mikhail Pochtarev will manage the business”.
However, later Pedersen quite quickly stopped cooperation with “CMA CGM” as a whole and “rooted himself” in the top management of Ukrainian logistics companies, but in relation to Pochtarev, the phrase “nothing is more permanent than temporary” turned out to be prophetic.
However, much more interesting is the person of Oleg Shabotin, the former long-time co-founder of “CMA SHIPS RUS”, who disappeared from the relevant list in 2024.
This same person for many years headed the Russian subsidiaries of another global shipping structure, namely “Marlow Navigation”. The official history of this corporation begins in 1982, and the founder of the corporation is called the Dutchman Hermann Eden, and the company’s offices from the very beginning operated with registration in the Netherlands, Cyprus and Germany.
Shabotin, in turn, has “marked himself” as the main “talking head” of the Russian office of “Marlow Navigation” since at least 2003, and he headed the now-defunct CJSC “Marlow Navigation Russia” and LLC “Marlow Navigation Kaliningrad”, as well as the current Rostov LLC “Marlow Navigation Rus”, where he is also the CEO.
At the same time, the offices of “Marlow Navigation Rus” actually operate in St. Petersburg and Vladivostok, and in Novorossiysk, the actual structure of Marlow Navigation was the company “Sunrise Marine” LLC, founded in 2015, tax code 9204004521, the founder of which was first Boris Ezri, and then Andrey Bugrimov.
“Sunrise Marine” had the “working name” as “Marlow Navigation Taurica” in the first years of its existence, and it was under this brand that its first Novorossiysk office was opened, and this company is mentioned on the official website of “Marlow Navigation Rus”.
At the same time, neither during the creation of this structure, nor in the subsequent one, it was particularly clear that its main “target audience” is Crimean sailors; there are reports on social networks about the activities, at least in Sevastopol and Kerch, of “Marlow Navigation” recruiters “under the umbrella” of “Sunrise Marine”, which coordinated the corresponding “shadow offices” in these cities.
In this sense, it is not surprising that the aforementioned Bugrimov is originally from Kerch, and the aforementioned Ezri received the Russian tax number 92 0455539058 in Sevastopol and purchased an apartment there in 2015, for which, however, he later began to sue the sellers. But the activities of “Sunrise Marine” are noteworthy for our research in another sense.
The fact is that the “main Russian office” of “Marlow Navigation”, just like “CMA CGM”, as follows from open sources, recruits seafarers primarily for container ships and bulk carriers.
But among the dozens of advertisements from 2025 from the “Marlow Navigation Rus” office in St. Petersburg, we found at least two for positions on tankers, namely the senior and, respectively, the second mate on the German-flagged tankers “Seamarlin” IMO number 9380489, “Seaconger” IMO number 9352298, which are operated by “German Tanker Shipping GMBH” from Bremen.
And by a “strange coincidence” on the “Magic Port” maritime portal, in August 2025, both of these vessels were listed as being at risk of sanctions, since they repeatedly called at Novorossiysk for loading, from where they exported oil to the ports of the Mediterranean Sea.
Before going into the question of how “safe” in principle the position of a ship’s officer with Russian citizenship becomes for the transportation of “competitive cargoes” by container ships or bulk carriers of “unfriendly countries to Russia”, we note that formally the employment of hundreds of Russians as engine and deck officers from the St. Petersburg office of “Marlow Navigation Rus” corresponds to the company’s statements about cooperation with “more than 130 shipowners” from Germany and the Netherlands, apparently several beneficiaries.
But if we analyze the vacancies that the Novorossiysk“ daughter” of “Marlow Navigation”, “Sunrise Marine”, places for Crimean residents, then the percentage of offers for tankers is much higher, and the announced salary rates for the positions are somewhat lower. In the 2023 marine chats, it was written about these vacancies in the marine chats that “they are currently sending to Indians on Nautica”.
It is highly likely that we are talking about the Georgian crewing company “Nautica”, which specializes in supplying crews specifically to the tanker fleet, which is registered primarily in the UAE and has, among other things, Indian shipowners. Among other things, in the vacancies published in the summer by “Nautica”, we discovered an option for the tanker “The Sauce” under the flag of Liberia, IMO number 9315769, which in 2025 transported Russian oil from both Novorossiysk and Ust-Luga.
In any case, it is obvious that “Sunrise Marine” offers vacancies with the “start” of the contract not only for vessels of European operators, but primarily in Russian Black Sea ports, and therefore the corresponding tankers there will be loaded with clearly sanctioned products.
Also noteworthy is the fact that it is “Sunrise Marine” that offers its seafarer clients “bank accounts in Kazakhstan”, apparently to avoid sanctions restrictions during payments, it is obvious that such “special options” are most interesting to crew members of sanctioned vessels.
At the same time, it is worth adding that the activities described above, namely “Marlow Navigation”, overlap with “CMA CGM”, not only in the person of Oleg Shabotin, who twenty years ago demonstrated at maritime forums complete mastery of all the “behind the scenes” of crewing agencies in the Netherlands.
It is interesting that the Russian subsidiaries of “Marlow Navigation” and “CMA CGM” described above, together with two other crewing companies from St. Petersburg, “Brise Shipping” and “Neva Shipping Management” founded in 2018 the “Consumer Society of Mutual Insurance “Association””, tax number 784004538 which was later liquidated in October 2022.
Such a P&I “on a minimum” basis was obviously invented by the Russian management of “Marlow Navigation” and “CMA CGM” as a form of imitation of “compliance with the requirements of the Maritime Labour Convention” in terms of its requirement to guarantee the shipowner’s liability to the seafarer. It is not surprising that the same idea was later discussed in the “Association of Companies for the Selection, Training, Hiring and Placement of Seafarers”, (NCP “ACSTES”), the president of which, as you might guess, is the same Oleg Shabotin.
However, this structure includes not only “Marlow Navigation” and “CMA CGM”, but also Russian “V.Ships” subsidiaries (“Baltic Group International Novorossiysk”, and “Baltic Group International St. Petersburg”, and subsidieries of “Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement (BSM)” (“Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement Crew Service Center St. Petersburg”, also as of the “Danaos Shipping”(“Danaos-Russia”) etc.
The aforementioned Association and its “talking head” Shabotin have also been noted in recent years in discussing attempts to circumvent sanctions in the area of payments and transfers of sailors with Russian passports, as well as in an extremely notable situation when they publicly demanded from the Russian Foreign Ministry “assistance” in resolving the issue of “frequent refusals of sailors to obtain Chinese visas”.
From the truly prompt response of Russian diplomats to such a request, knowing the Russian bureaucracy, it became obvious that the aforementioned crewing association is patronized in the Kremlin not only and not so much by their European “parent companies”.
This is also proven by the involvement of other mentioned crewing companies in the activities of the “shadow” fleet, which becomes obvious on the example of the aforementioned “Baltic Group” network, which often uses the name “Baltic Group International Ltd”.
The above-mentioned companies, namely CJSC “Baltic Group International Novorossiysk”, tax code 2315018573 and JSC “Baltic Group International St. Petersburg”, tax code 7808033560 and license for employment of seafarers 1520160155 have a joint director, Vladimir Feoktistov, and the second of the mentioned companies in the Russian registers is directly indicated with the above-mentioned English company “V.Ships”, namely “V Ships UK Group LTD”.
CJSC “Baltic Group International Dalny Vostok”, tax code 2508051760 with director Sergey Novoselov also operates in Russia. In addition, all these structures are listed in the “V.Ships” 2021 and 2024 documents as subsidiaries, and Vladimir Feoktistov, Sergey Novoselov, and Victor Khodakov are listed as the corporation’s top managers in Russia.
“V.Ships” is part of “V.Group Holdings Limited”, registered in Monaco and headquartered in London and with over 60 offices in 30 countries, the majority of which is owned by the American structure “Advent International” from Boston. Therefore, it is not surprising that the web resources of the Russian “Baltic Group International” do not mention anything about the founders or the top management of the company, except for a single mention of Feoktistov, or about its general status in Russian jurisdiction.
At the same time, these resources themselves acknowledge the presence of “Baltic Group International” structures in Riga, Batumi, Tbilisi, Astrakhan, Arkhangelsk, St. Petersburg and Novorossiysk, despite the fact that since 2025 the Novorossiysk office has been virtually “moved” to Georgia and advises seafarers to contact the company’s operators and managers there, and the specified address in Riga, 17A, Duntesiela, LV-1005, coincides with the local office of the “Bureau Veritas” classifier and with the local subsidiary of the same “CMA CGM”, namely “CMA CGM Latvia, SIA” and other maritime structures. In Georgia, the structure operates as “Baltic Group International Georgia Ltd”, registered in Batumi with VAT Number 211374047.
At the same time, Russian-language maritime portals indicate that “Baltic Group International” also operates in Tallinn, Klaipėda, as well as in Samara, Nakhodka and Kaliningrad. In Tallinn, the company of the same name “Baltic International Group OÜ” is actually registered with the code 14016884 and the address Harju maakond, Tallinn, Kesklinna linnaosa, Narva mnt 7-636, 10117, and in Klaipėda, the company “Baltic Group International Klaipėda, UAB” is registered with the code 142062212 and the address Klaipėdos m. sav. Klaipėdos m. Jono g. 10.
Analysis of vacancies from all offices of “Baltic Group International Ltd” shows that they are actively and massively recruiting crew members for tankers. For example, from the Batumi office of this corporation at the end of 2024, Russian Shein Aleksandr was employed for positions on the tanker “Free Spirit” with IMO number 9409259 as Fourth Engineer and Russian Denis Kostyrskii as Third Officer.
In early 2025, this vessel, which actively transports Russian oil products, changed its name to “Spirit 2”under the flag of Panama and then Palau, but this did not prevent it from being included on July 17, 2025 by the United Kingdom in the sanctions lists precisely for the transportation of Russian oil to third countries, and in August 2025 the tanker was transporting Russian oil from Ust-Luga towards the Suez Canal.
It was revealed that the Batumi office of this corporation in October 2024 employed Meheramov Elcin as a Third Officer on the tanker “Shusha” with IMO number 9779941. This tanker under the flag of Azerbaijan fell under EU sanctions in July 2025, precisely for transporting Russian oil to third countries.
We add that in 2021 this same office employed Gogratchadze Lasha as a Third Engineer on the tanker “Thunderbolt” with IMO number 9388742. In this historical case, it is noteworthy not only the subsequent repeated change of flags and names by the vessel, to “Suria” and “Fondeya”, and the subsequent inclusion of this vessel in the sanction lists for transporting Russian oil by the United Kingdom, the European Union, Canada and Australia, but also the fact that at the time of the described employment, the tanker was directly operated by “V.Ships UK”.
Also, the Novorossiysk office of “Baltic Group International Ltd” in 2024 employed Korzhunov Evgenii as an Electrical Engineer on the tanker “Zumba” IMO 9689160, under the flag of the Marshall Islands, and Dobychin Sergey as a Master on the tanker “Prive Angel” IMO 9397468 under the flag of Panama. These vessels were listed on the “MagicPort” maritime portal in August 2025 as being at risk of sanctions due to the alleged transportation of Russian oil.
And the Kaliningrad office of this company employed Chikhladze Akakkiy as a Master on the tanker “BW Lara” IMO 9269257, which now, under the name “Earth”, also appears in the sanctions risk group, which is not surprising, because in August 2025 it transported Russian oil from Primorsk towards the Suez Canal.
Thus, an analysis of the work of global crewing corporations indicates their involvement both in the crewing of Russian tankers of the “shadow” fleet and in working with sailors of the occupied territories of the Ukraine, and at the same time, the systemic growth of the Russian top management of these crewing corporations both in the relations of global maritime business and in the activities of the Russian management system of the maritime industry, which is closely intertwined with the activities of Russian state services, which are constantly increasing their activity.
Such activities violate brutally demands UNCLOS, MLC, STCW and set of IMO resolutions in issues of maritime safery and it indicate the need for a close and more conscious approach to identifying and terminating the activities of violators, their sanction persecution and improving the mechanisms for holding companies and individuals accountable who actually conduct extensive cooperation with the Russia as aggressor state.