EU intends to open a new front in the Baltic Sea in the hidden war with Russia

European countries are negotiating large-scale detentions of Moscow's oil tankers in the Baltic Sea. New legislation is being drafted to give these measures legal force. This is reported by RBC-Ukraine citing Politico.

Illustrative photo

Finnish authorities seized the Eagle S tanker in December in a large-scale operation on suspicion that it had damaged an undersea power line connecting Estonia and Finland. The seizure of the vessel, which was carrying 100 barrels of oil from St. Petersburg, marked the opening of a new front in the secret war between Russia and the West.

According to Politico sources, proposals being considered include using international law to seize ships for environmental or piracy reasons. If that fails, countries could act on their own, jointly enacting new national laws to seize more ships in more distant maritime zones.

“Almost 50 percent of the sanctioned trade [of Russian offshore oil] passes through the Gulf of Finland,” said Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna.

According to him, there are environmental threats, "there are attacks on our underwater infrastructure."

“The question now is… what can we do with these ships?” he told Politico. “We can’t block the entire sea, but we can control more… There are a lot of possibilities.”

The talks illustrate Europe's growing frustration that Russia continues to transport its oil and evade Western sanctions by relying on an ever-growing "shadow fleet" — aging vessels with unclear owners and unknown insurance.

In doing so, Moscow has been able to preserve a key lifeline for its military efforts in Ukraine, given that oil and gas account for about half of the Kremlin’s revenue. And all of this is happening right under Europe’s nose, on its own waterways.

Shadow Fleet

In 2022, the EU imposed a ban on Russian oil imports and set a price cap with the G7 on Moscow's international crude oil sales, hoping to reduce the Kremlin's revenues after its invasion of Ukraine.

But Russia soon found ways to circumvent these measures. Moscow’s shadow fleet, which often relies on dubious insurers to circumvent oil price caps, now accounts for up to 17% of all oil tankers in the world.

As a result, “the shadow fleet now transports over 80% of all Russian crude oil,” said Isaac Levy, head of the Russia-Europe research group at the Center for Energy and Clean Air Research.

He claims that the Baltic Sea is the most important artery for this illicit trade. Typically, ships load up with Russian oil in ports such as Ust-Luga near St. Petersburg before making their way across the Gulf of Finland and across the Baltic Sea to the world's oceans via the North Sea.

According to Levy, 348 shadow fleet vessels left Baltic ports last year, accounting for 40% of Russia's total oil sales. This figure is equivalent to a third of Moscow's annual military budget.

War on the waves

The growing number of incidents creates the need to pursue tankers that sail with impunity in European waters - and not only through sanctions, which have proven too weak.

“We are witnessing that… there are some ways to backtrack” on Western sanctions against Russia, Lithuanian Energy Minister Zhygimantas Vaičiūnas told Politico. “That’s why measures to counter the shadow fleet would really help achieve results that we are not able to achieve with the sanctions regime.”

In addition to proposals coming from the EU to blacklist 74 shadow fleet tankers, Nordic and Baltic countries are separately discussing how they can legally begin seizing more Russian-linked vessels, officials and diplomats said.

According to them, the proposals are mainly divided into three categories.

First, authorities could detain ships that risk damaging the local environment, such as through oil spills. Given that most of these tankers are at least 15 years old and prone to defects, such accidents are an unpleasant possibility and have probably already happened.

Second, officials said, authorities could use piracy laws to seize ships that threaten critical underwater infrastructure, as they have been doing since late 2023, when numerous ships damaged vital power and internet cables.

Finally, if international law fails, countries are also discussing jointly introducing new national laws to make it easier to seize ships. These could include requiring tankers in the Baltic Sea to use a proposed list of trusted insurers, officials said, which would allow countries such as Estonia and Finland to detain ships that rely on other, less reliable operators.

Recall that, according to the GUR of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, the Russian shadow fleet currently has up to 1000 mostly outdated vessels (with a total deadweight of over 100 million tons) that export oil and petroleum products.

Read also on Newsky "Ukraine wants to sign a contract for the supply of liquefied gas from the USA" and look at "Boring Pence" YouTube channels.

To always be aware of events, subscribe to TG channel Newsky. We also recommend current discussions of friends of Ukraine in North America on Rashkin Report YouTube channels.