Published on
02/06/2026 - 9:00 GMT+2
For most Europeans, it was just another quiet weekend, but out in the Atlantic, a high-stakes naval standoff was playing out. In response of the interception, French President Emmanuel Macron declared it completely unacceptable for ships to bypass international sanctions and fund Russia's ongoing war.
Russia's infamous shadow fleet is a clandestine armada of tankers that Moscow has deployed to bypass international sanctions on oil sales, most notably the G7 price cap. The Kremlin has spent billions to buy dilapidated ships of murky ownership that fall short of the premium insurance and therefore evade Western oversight.
However, insurance is just one of the ways that the shadow fleet uses to avoid global tracking. These ghost vessels manipulate their registration, switch flags to jump from one jurisdiction, transmit falsified GPS data, turn off their transponders to become invisible at sea.
