Europe's crackdown halves shadow fleet ships sailing under false flags, report says
Sanctions and detentions have forced 107 shadow vessels to join the Russian flag registry since January 2025, leaving them with few other options as open ship registries tighten oversight, a CREA report said.
A recent report by the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) reveals that Europe's efforts to crack down on the shadow fleet have reduced the number of ships sailing under false flags by nearly half. Between October 2025 and June 2026, the fleet's size decreased from 101 to 45 vessels, according to the report published on September 25.
The shadow fleet is comprised of outdated, poorly insured tankers that Russia employs to export oil in violation of international sanctions. Western nations, including France, Sweden, Belgium, and the U.K., have been actively enforcing sanctions against the fleet by boarding suspected vessels entering their waters. Countries with open registries, such as Panama and Comoros, have tightened oversight due to Western pressure, resulting in the removal of sanctioned vessels from their registries.
This forced many shadow fleet ships to hide behind false flags, rendering them stateless and providing European countries with the justification to detain them. On August 30, an EU naval mission in the Mediterranean intercepted an oil tanker suspected of being part of the shadow fleet. Subsequently, the number of shadow vessels flying false flags dropped from a peak of 101 in October 2025 to 45 by June.
Meanwhile, the Russian ship registry has grown by 36% since the beginning of last year, reaching 382 vessels by the end of June 2026, with 87% of the newly added Russian-flagged ships already sanctioned. Eighty-six percent of the newly Russian-flagged vessels had flown at least one false flag before being sanctioned and adopting the Russian flag, according to the CREA report.
The shift towards the Russian registry, however, has slowed since December 2025, with only three new additions in June. The analysts from CREA note that adopting a Russian flag makes the shadow fleet vessels immune to European interceptions, rendering the sanctions mechanism ineffective for European navies.
Written by urgent.news from Kyiv Independent's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
