The oceans are increasingly populated by a dangerous armada. It numbers around 1,300 vessels. They are not warships. They are not state of the art. They are unarmed, old, often decrepit. They fly flags of convenience from countries such as Panama, Liberia, the Marshall Islands, Malta, and Gabon. Their crews, often Filipino, Chinese, or Indian, suffer from human rights and trafficking abuses.
What the ships carry is Russian crude oil bound for overseas buyers, especially China and India. Their purpose: to bankroll Russian president Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine. They are war enablers, sanction evaders, flouters of maritime law, an environmental disaster waiting to happen. They comprise, it is estimated, one-fifth of the world’s tankers. When Moscow feels this lifeline is threatened, it takes military steps to defend it. Actions have included fighter jets and naval escorts.
The armada is often referred to as the shadow fleet. It earns the name by playing cat and mouse on the open water and in ports where it might face penalties or seizure. Deceptive practices include turning off identification systems, switching ship names, falsifying manifests or locations, and “flag hopping” (or re-registering under different countries). Another tactic is offshore ship-to-ship transfers, in which cargo is secretly exchanged between vessels while at sea to hide its origin and destination. It’s piracy adapted for the modern era.
The use of shadow fleets to evade sanctions is not new. Iran, Syria, North Korea, and Venezuela have all relied on the tactic, but their impact has been regarded as small. The practice ramped up dramatically after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, as a response to Western efforts to limit its oil revenues. Three years later, what began as an improvised workaround has hardened into a parallel shipping system, one large enough to cushion Russia from economic punishment.
For Canada and its allies, the challenge is not only how to counter this seen-but-unseen convoy but how to confront the darker reality it represents: a petrostate determined to keep its war machine afloat at all costs.
Sanctions work only when they hurt something vital. For Russia, Western nations zeroed in on a clear vulnerability: oil exports. According to the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, oil and gas accounted for 30 percent of the government’s revenues in 2024 and remain Putin’s “single most important source of finance.” With that pressure point in mind, Western nations crafted a multi-front sanctions strategy. It was aimed at both individuals and companies—with three interlocking measures intended to inflict maximum financial pain.
The first step was a ban on the purchase of Russian crude oil. Canada was early out of the gate, imposing its prohibition in February 2022, shortly after the invasion. But the move was symbolic, as it had not imported any crude oil from Russia since 2019. The United States followed suit the next month. But again, neither country had been a major customer. Europe, however, was. That made the decision by the United Kingdom and the European Union on December 5, 2022, to cut off seaborne shipments a turning point. Two months later, they halted refined oil products.
The second element was a price cap. Introduced by the G7 in 2022, and joined by the EU and Australia under what became known as the Price Cap Coalition, the plan blended hard policy with diplomatic persuasion. On the policy side, Western companies that provided essential maritime services, like insurance or financing, could work with Russian exporters only if shipments were sold at or below a fixed price of $60 (US) per barrel. The aspirational goal was broader: urge importing nations outside the Western-enforced framework to adopt the same ceiling, limiting Moscow’s revenue worldwide.
The third tactic targeted the shadow fleet itself. By blacklisting Russian owned or operated vessels, authorities aimed to limit their ability to make port calls or obtain commercial services.
Russia, of course, responded. The country “may never be as strong as it looks,” observed the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, “but neither is it as weak as it seems.” Oil was simply redirected to Asian countries, notably China and India. The price cap had no universal jurisdiction and could be ignored by non-coalition states. Moreover, the cap had been kept at a relatively high number precisely for fear of roiling global markets. This left Russia’s oil money largely intact.
Russia’s answer to efforts to rein in its shadow fleet was simple: make it bigger and refine its deceptions. Lloyd’s List, which collects shipping data, recently noted the example of how a sanctioned tanker, the Rozmarine, faked its identity and position before engaging in a ship-to-ship transfer of oil off the Gulf of Oman. Another sanctioned oil tanker, the Canara, deactivated its automatic identification system—or AIS—for sixteen days, vanishing from trackers, and carried out another furtive ship-to-ship transfer of oil that ultimately ended up in India.
The West, however, eventually came to see its most effective tool would be to deepen the battle against the shadow fleet. Outside the bans and beyond the coalition’s failed bid for global compliance, a lot more could still be done to curb the network of tankers moving oil to buyers to pay for the war against Ukraine. But sanctions against the fleet ramped up slowly. The first came from the US in October 2023. They were imposed on two vessels transporting oil sold above the price cap. It took until mid-2024 for the EU and the UK to join in the hunt. The EU sanctioned twenty-seven vessels in June 2024, and the UK followed with a sanctions list of ten vessels in September 2024. Canada, for the moment, stayed on the sidelines.
The tempo of sanctions quickened this year, as awareness grew of the fleet’s central role in helping Russia evade restrictions. Added to it were growing concerns about the tankers’ use in hybrid warfare operations, including sabotage and intelligence gathering on military installations.
The US initially led the way, prior to President Donald Trump’s inauguration, when it sanctioned 183 vessels, the vast majority in the shadow fleet. Canada followed with its first targeted sanctions against the tankers, listing 109 vessels this past February. It listed an additional 201 vessels, announced at the G7 summit in June, bringing the Canadian total to 310.
The UK took a similar path with new listings in May, July, and September, bringing their total to nearly 500 vessels sanctioned. The EU, similarly, is set to boost its listing of Russian shadow fleet vessels to over 560, as proposed in the recent nineteenth sanctions package.
But the US, reflecting its reduced support for Ukraine under Trump, has stopped short of expanding its sanctions or coordinating further with Canada, the UK, or the EU. It has not named or restricted a single Russian shadow tanker since January. The US total of sanctioned ships remains static at 216, well below the level of other Western allies of Ukraine.
As US support for sanctions against the shadow fleet fades, the spotlight shifts to how far Canada and its allies are willing to go to keep Russia in check.
I put a series of questions to Global Affairs Canada, which manages Canada’s sanctions policy. When asked about the Russian tankers, they said joint efforts had achieved “disruptive and stigmatization” effects. According to GAC, many sanctioned vessels had ceased to trade (though no numbers were provided).
When asked whether Canada had engaged countries flouting the price cap, such as India, GAC said it had not, though other G7 members had. The most notable example being the US’s so-called “secondary” sanctions on India for buying Russian crude oil in volume. GAC also confirmed that Canada had not taken specific steps to urge other governments, notably Greece, to block sales of older oil tankers to Russian-affiliated buyers.
What’s clear from GAC’s responses is Canada’s preference for acting multilaterally rather than taking the lead or striking out on its own. It’s Canada doing its middle-power thing—aligning with partners like the EU, UK, and US, even as Washington’s commitment is drifting.
One example of multilateral action is the “Shadow Fleet Task Force,” announced during Canada’s presidency of the G7 this past March. Its mission—to track and expose the tankers—is easier said than done. The disparity between the estimated size of the Russian fleet and the number of vessels that Canada and its partners have gone after is considerable. Pegged at roughly 1,300 vessels, less than half of the fleet has been sanctioned by the EU and UK, and just 24 percent by Canada. As the Kyiv School of Economics noted, Russia keeps adding reinforcements this year. They comprise of predominantly old vessels. Of the sixty newly acquired tankers deployed between January and July, only half have been sanctioned. Western powers are trying to keep pace but are clearly behind. Coordination of sanctions lists, so that everyone is on the same page for monitoring and interdiction, has proven challenging.
Canada has capabilities that could boost the work of the task force, including a unique tool: its Dark Vessel Detection program. Announced at a 2018 G7 ministerial meeting in Halifax, DVD combines satellite imagery, radio-signal scans, and data from Canada’s state-of-the-art RADARSAT-2 satellite, which uses radar to capture images through cloud, darkness, or fog. The system already helps small Pacific states and island nations spot unreported and unregulated fishing vessels that have turned off their tracking systems—a key shadow fleet tactic.
While DVD is a ready-made and tested asset, another leaf can be taken from our activities in the Indo-Pacific, where we lead an annual monitoring mission against illegal fishing. The 2025 operation involved the Canadian coast guard vessel CCGS Sir Wilfrid Laurier, with Canada flying aerial surveillance flights from Japan and teaming up with South Korean personnel. RADARSAT-2, again, watched from space.
If applied to the North and Baltic Seas, these same tools—satellite intelligence, aerial surveillance, and coordination with allies—could help bring the shadow fleet out of the dark.
But as sanctions tighten around Russia’s ghost ships, one thing is clear. Putin will go to great lengths to protect them.
His navy has been training in the Baltic Sea to guard its routes. With around 50 percent of shadow fleet exports moving through there, the area is a hotspot. An incident this past May was a worrying precedent. Russians sent a fighter jet to deter Estonian efforts to inspect a sanctioned vessel, the Jaguar, transiting the Gulf of Finland. The fighter flew into Estonian air space as part of its demonstration. F-16 jets of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization arrived to monitor the scene. No shots were fired, and the Estonian navy eventually escorted the tanker out of its waters. But the escalatory potential of such run-ins is evident.
Russia’s willingness to use its military to protect the fleet may expand beyond the Baltic Sea. In June, two Russian shadow fleet tankers, the Sierra and the Naxos, were reportedly escorted through the English Channel by a Russian warship, the RFS Boikiy. The Boikiy had apparently changed her AIS signal and was transmitting as a fishing vessel—a practice known as spoofing—to disguise her identity and avoid any shadowing by the Royal Navy. The flotilla successfully slipped through the English Channel and entered the Baltic Sea.
Clashes may also erupt if shadow tankers are suspected of sabotage. In August, Finnish authorities accused the captain and two officers of a suspected fleet ship, the Eagle S, of cutting five Baltic Sea telecommunications and power cables connecting Finland to Estonia in December of 2024. It’s alleged the ship dragged its anchor across the seabed for ninety kilometres. While this is the first such criminal case of its kind, the fact that a Finnish court recently concluded that it did not have jurisdiction demonstrates the legal challenges involved.
When the French navy recently boarded and detained a sanctioned shadow tanker, the Boracay, off its Atlantic coast, a heated war of words developed. The Boracay was of special concern because of fears it had been used to launch drones that flew into Danish airspace and forced the closure of Copenhagen’s airport. French president Emmanuel Macron applauded the naval operation and urged tougher action against the tankers to cut off Putin’s war financing. Putin shot back, accusing France of “piracy” and suggested the best way to deal with pirates was to “destroy them.”
As this shadow war unfolds in northern European waters, Canada must decide whether to act merely as a convening middle power or to lend its intelligence and military muscle to the fight. There is evidence, for example, that shadow tankers are avoiding transit through the English Channel altogether and, instead, using a roundabout course from Russian ports via northern Scotland and the Irish Sea, where they presumably know that Irish capacity for monitoring and inspection in its large maritime zone is limited. This safe route for Russian evasion must be plugged. Canadian assets and intelligence could be of real assistance.
This might be an occasion to turn to the words of Prime Minister Mark Carney, who proclaimed this June that Canada must move from a focus on the strength of our values to an emphasis on the value of our strength. Canada has taken a principled stance against Russia—our values have been demonstrated. What remains is to show that when it comes to the high-seas pirates of the shadow fleet, Canada is no longer just watching from shore.
Wesley Wark is an expert on national security and intelligence issues. He is a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation and a fellow with the Balsillie School of International Affairs.
