While European institutions prepare for the final embargo on Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG), scheduled for 1 January 2027, Moscow is rolling out an unprecedented special operation at sea in terms of its technical and legal complexity. Having failed to halt sanctions pressure through conventional diplomatic means, the Kremlin, together with the largest energy corporations (Novatek and Gazprom), has moved to actively build a specialised “shadow gas fleet.”
Like the oil supply channel established after 2022 and now numbering more than 1,000 tankers, the gas project has required entirely different engineering solutions, capital investments and legal manoeuvres. Liquefied gas is a product of high pressure and ultra-low temperatures (−161 °C); its transportation does not allow for standard commercial compromises. Nevertheless, over the past six months the Kremlin’s strategy has shifted from the planning stage to the phase of aggressive implementation.
The key signal for Western intelligence services and maritime analysts was the publication of data from Windward and Kpler in the Financial Times on 4 August 2026. According to the investigation, over the past six months structures linked to Russia purchased at least eight second-hand gas carriers on the secondary market. Combined with the first commercially built domestic vessels, the total number of controlled sanctioned gas carriers has reached approximately 25 ships. At the centre of this scheme are tankers that had previously been decommissioned or placed in reserve by international shipping giants. Four vessels — Kosmos, Orion, Merkuriy and Luch — have already been recorded loading liquefied gas from the flagship sanctioned project Arctic LNG 2.
To grasp the scale of what is happening, it is worth comparing the figures. The global oil tanker fleet numbers around 7,000 vessels, of which Russia’s shadow oil fleet exceeds 1,000 units (approximately 15%). The global LNG tanker fleet is limited to roughly 800 vessels, and Russia’s shadow gas fleet of 25 ships accounts for about 3%. Despite the modest absolute numbers compared with the oil sector, 25 gas carriers represent a serious force for the narrow and highly concentrated LNG market, capable of moving billions of cubic metres of gas per year to Asian markets.
The tanker acquisition scheme is built on a chain of shell companies registered in jurisdictions with opaque corporate disclosure. In the UAE (Dubai), Celtic Maritime and Trading SA formalised the purchase of the gas carriers Orion (built in 2005) and Merkuriy (2006) in February 2026. In Hong Kong, Mighty Ocean Shipping acquired the gas carrier Kosmos (2005) in the same month. In Russia, OOO Abakan registered the gas carrier Luch (2006) in April 2026. A striking example of the operation’s scale was the spring purchase of a single block of four gas carriers from the Omani state company Asyad Shipping for a total of around $110 million. These vessels then promptly change their flags of registration (to Panama, Gabon or Russia), switch off automatic identification systems (AIS) and employ spoofing technologies (coordinate substitution), concealing their real location in Arctic waters.
While the shadow oil fleet primarily faces legal barriers, the LNG project has run into fierce technological confrontation. The Arctic LNG 2 plant is located on the Gydan Peninsula, where ice thickness in winter exceeds two metres. Exporting the gas requires unique Arc7 ice-class gas carriers. Before the imposition of strict US and EU sanctions, logistics relied on vessel orders in South Korea. However, the shipyards of Hanwha Ocean and Samsung Heavy Industries froze the delivery of six already built and chartered Arc7 vessels. At the same time, the French company GTT withdrew licences for cryogenic membrane tank insulation systems, making standard assembly at Russian shipyards impossible.
Under these conditions, the Zvezda shipbuilding complex in the Far East has managed to deliver only the first two tankers: Alexey Kosygin (December 2025) and Konstantin Posyet (summer 2026). Another four vessels remain at various stages of construction with significant delays. As leading analyst at the consulting firm S-RM Septimus Knox notes, replacing South Korean shipyards and French membrane technologies with domestic production will take Russia five to seven years. The purchase of old non-ice-class tankers is an attempt to build a two-leg logistics chain before the project is completely blocked.
The architecture of the two-leg delivery works as follows. In the first stage, the few available Arc7 vessels (Alexey Kosygin, Christophe de Margerie) take LNG from Gydan and transport it to ice-free waters. In the second stage, a giant 400-metre floating storage unit, Saam FSU, has been installed in the Barents Sea (Ura Bay, Murmansk Region), where ship-to-ship (STS) transfers take place. In the third stage, the purchased second-hand tankers without ice class (Kosmos, Merkuriy and others) take the gas from the Saam FSU and head to China, India or other Asian countries.
The use of vessels more than 20 years old to transport cryogenic liquids in the harsh conditions of the North raises serious concerns among environmentalists and military analysts. According to data from the environmental organisation Bellona (report for June 2026), operating 2005–2006-built gas carriers in the low temperatures and high wind loads of the Northern Sea Route carries catastrophic risks. Depressurisation of a cryogenic tank at −161 °C leads to instantaneous brittle fractures of the steel hull structures and a large-scale thermal explosion.
Beyond ecology, the institutes PISM and ACLED point to the hybrid dimension of the phenomenon. The shadow fleet consists of dozens of “ghost ships” with unclear legal status that sail near critical underwater infrastructure of NATO countries (gas pipelines, telecommunications cables). Switching off AIS and using flags of convenience creates a perfect grey zone for reconnaissance or sabotage.
The European Union and the United Kingdom recognise the scale of the threat. Under the 20th and 21st packages of EU sanctions, adopted in the first half of 2026, a mandatory requirement was introduced for authorities to be notified of any sale of an LNG tanker to third countries. In June 2026 the United Kingdom imposed direct personal sanctions on specific vessels (including Arctic Express and Avacha). Irina Mironova, an expert at the New Energy Advancement Hub, notes that Russia’s shadow LNG fleet is a unique phenomenon in global energy: no sanctioned country has previously possessed such a high level of technological complexity in the gas industry as to create parallel logistics chains for liquefied gas.The creation of the LNG shadow fleet 2.0 demonstrates that Russia does not intend to leave the global gas market voluntarily. Even after 1 January 2027, when the European market will be completely closed to official imports of Russian LNG, the assembled armada of 25–30 vessels will make it possible to redirect a significant share of the volumes from Yamal LNG and Arctic LNG 2 to Asia. The main vulnerability of this system remains not the absence of buyers in Asia, but total dependence on narrow transshipment nodes (such as the Saam FSU) and the limited resource of ageing vessels. The success of the European embargo will depend on whether the EU, together with the United States, can block the operations of shell companies in Dubai and close flags of convenience to violating gas carriers before the 2027 deadline.