Vladimir Putin is launching spy drones from shadow fleet tankers and flying them above critical energy sites in his escalating hybrid warfare campaign against the UK and Europe, intelligence experts have warned.
While the shadow fleet provides an economic lifeline to Russia’s wartime economy, evidence points to the Kremlin increasingly “weaponising” the vessels by using them to carry out intelligence gathering and to target underwater energy and data cables.
Security guards recruited from Russia’s armed forces and intelligence services are now routinely being deployed on the ships, intelligence experts monitoring the tankers have discovered.
Sources told The i Paper that there is a “close correlation” between drone flights and the movements of the shadow fleet or Russian commercial vessels.
Moscow generates revenues worth £156m a day from oil exports carried on a fleet of up to 1,300 ageing, sanctions-busting tankers making dozens of transits a week through British and European waters en route to and from Russian fossil fuel export hubs on the Baltic Sea.
