France’s navy boarded and diverted the oil tanker Deliver near Sicily on June 23, making it the fifth Russian shadow fleet vessel seized by France in 2026 alone. The Cameroon-flagged tanker was reportedly carrying Russian crude from the Primorsk terminal, bound for Singapore via the Suez Canal.
President Emmanuel Macron confirmed the operation two days later, and the message was blunt.
“We will not let the shadow fleet circumvent sanctions and finance the Russian war effort. Europe is determined.”
The EU’s 21st sanctions package, introduced earlier in June, doesn’t just list ships. It explicitly targets cryptocurrency-related activities that facilitate sanctions evasion, dragging digital assets squarely into the geopolitical crosshairs of Europe’s economic war against Moscow.
The shadow fleet gets smaller, and the crypto net gets wider
