BRUSSELS — Russian-linked vessels are continuing to leak oil off Europe’s shores — despite Western sanctions — underscoring the continent’s inability to rein in Moscow’s so-called shadow fleet.

In the past year, at least five tankers from Russia’s sanctions-dodging armada have carried on sailing unimpeded in European waters after leaving oil slicks near the continent, according to a joint investigation by the not-for-profit journalism group SourceMaterial and POLITICO.

Two of those vessels had been individually sanctioned by the United Kingdom before they left the slicks.

These new revelations, which draw on satellite footage from the SkyTruth NGO paired with shipping data from the Kpler commodities platform, follow a 2024 investigation by POLITICO documenting oil spills by the Russian shadow fleet. They highlight the difficulty Western governments face in throttling Russian oil exports and minimizing the risk of ecological disaster in their waters.

The incidents are “a huge problem,” said Latvian Energy Minister Kaspars Melnis. “We are quite lucky at this moment that we don’t have any environmental catastrophe happening.” 

Sanctions spillover

In 2022, the Group of Seven industrialized nations imposed a price limit on Russia’s global oil sales, which make up about a quarter of the Russian budget.

Since then, Moscow has increasingly shipped its oil on a growing flotilla of underinsured, creaky tankers with opaque ownership structures. That shadow fleet now numbers 1,300, according to the Lloyd’s List Intelligence maritime analysis firm, and has been linked to massive oil spills and damage to critical subsea infrastructure. 

European governments have sanctioned individual tankers, with Brussels so far blacklisting 444 vessels, preventing them from docking at EU ports or using Western services. The hope is also that the measures will prompt non-EU governments where the tankers are registered — known as flag states — to bar them from operating. The U.K. has sanctioned 450 vessels.

Experts warn the decrepit state of the tankers renders them more prone to accidents and collisions, while their murky ownership makes them untraceable and unaccountable to Western authorities. Because of the sanctions, they often sail underinsured.

“How good or not are already existing sanctions — [it’s] hard to say,” said Melnis.

A large oil spill left by such a tanker could cost up to €1.4 billion to clean up, the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air think tank has estimated. The bill would likely be paid by European taxpayers if the offending vessel could not be tracked down.

“The shadow fleet is [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s desperate and dangerous attempt to cling onto his oil profits and polluting the sea in the meantime,” said a U.K. foreign office spokesperson. “He’s using ships that ignore basic safety standards, increasing the chance of catastrophic oil spills.”

After POLITICO revealed that Russia-linked tankers were dumping oil across the world’s oceans last year, Brussels blacklisted one of the offending vessels, formerly called Innova.

The new findings illustrate the limits of that approach.

In one example from Nov. 15, 2024, a 12-kilometer slick appeared in Spanish waters off the Bay of Biscay in the wake of the Dinasty, a 280-meter-long tanker that was sailing from India to the Russian port of Primorsk. 

The vessel was under U.K. sanctions, with the EU following suit after the incident took place.

The Dinasty’s registered owner and commercial manager at the time of the incident — Libra Shipping and Moonlight Shipmanagement — could not be reached for comment. POLITICO was unable to contact the vessel’s current commercial manager and registered owner, Dreamer Shipmanagement and White Agate Marine.

The vessel’s erstwhile and present-day flag states, Barbados and Oman, did not reply to requests for comment. The Spanish coastguard did not respond to detailed questions from POLITICO.

“What does this say about European and U.S. sanctions? It proves that actually, regardless of whether the ships are sanctioned or not, they will still be able to find a way and a place to trade,” said Richard Meade, editor of Lloyd’s List Intelligence.

Given that shadow fleet tankers — which often ignore international shipping rules — now represent a fifth of the total world’s maritime feet, it also illustrates how “we are [unintentionally] undermining shipping safety by taking this approach to sanctions,” he added.

Out of the shadows

The incidents are prompting calls for renewed action — and for a change in approach.

As part of the EU’s 19th sanctions package since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, unveiled in September, the European Commission proposed adding 118 new Russian-linked vessels to its expanding blacklist.

Experts and the bloc’s Russia hawks have already called for more.

In addition to putting sanctions on even more ships, the EU must hit “the whole value chain” involved in carrying sanctioned oil, Finnish Energy Minister Sari Multala told POLITICO.

In practice, that means blacklisting more refineries that unload oil from Russian tankers linked with slicks, said Isaac Levi, Russia lead at the Helsinki-based CREA think tank, and sanctioning the vessels’ service providers and flag registries.

National coastguards should also detain vessels as they pass through European waters if they have historically left spills, operate without legitimate insurance or fly false flags, he argued.

In some cases, national authorities have taken matters into their own hands — but they haven’t acted systematically. In April, Estonia detained a suspected Russian shadow fleet tanker. And on Wednesday, French soldiers boarded a similar vessel after suspecting it of being used to bypass EU sanctions.

On Thursday, French President Emmanuel Macron said European military chiefs and NATO would develop new “joint actions in the coming weeks” to “impede suspicious ships” in its waters.

A Commission spokesperson told POLITICO that EU countries are required to “impose penalties … for situations of illegal discharge from ships of pollutants.”

Brussels is also targeting “enablers” of shadow fleet vessels such as refineries and commercial registries, the spokesperson said, and putting “diplomatic pressure” on relevant flag states. “This course of action will be actively pursued,” the spokesperson added.

But for Levi, the evidence of continued slicks showcases just how much this strategy is falling short.

“It seems shocking to me that these tankers, after having shown evidence of an oil spill and environmental damage … haven’t been detained,” he said. It’s like “driving a car into a shop and then driving off … without being chased by a police car.”