The shadow fleet is stepping out of the shadows.
As the U.S. military chased a dilapidated oil tanker away from Venezuela and across the Atlantic Ocean in recent days, the fugitive ship changed its identity. Previously known as the Bella 1, the vessel rebranded as the Marinera. It no longer claimed to come from Guyana. Its new flag, painted hastily on the hull by the crew in the middle of the chase, was the Russian tricolor.
The ship’s harried assumption of a Russian identity was probably intended to deter the United States from pursuing the vessel and to raise the specter of a Russian response to any seizure, according to maritime experts. The U.S. military proceeded anyway and intercepted the ship on Wednesday in the waters between Iceland and Scotland. Russia so far has not mounted a significant response.
Still, the ship’s embrace of the Russian flag is part of a broader trend in which so-called shadow tanker vessels have sought the imprimatur of Russian protection as Western nations have stepped up enforcement against the illicit oil trade around the globe.
Five tankers that have operated recently in Venezuelan waters, including the Marinera, have switched their flags to Russia in recent days, according to a Times analysis. All of the vessels have been subjected to U.S. sanctions for shipping either Iranian or Russian oil.
Last month, 17 shadow fleet tankers took on the Russian flag, according to Lloyd’s List, a maritime intelligence and data firm, and more than 40 have done so since last June. In one incident last year, the Russian military directly intervened, sending a fighter jet as a shot across the bow to Estonia when it stopped one of the tankers.
“Essentially, there is a flight to security here,” said Richard Meade, the editor in chief of Lloyd’s List. “Having cycled through four or five fake flags, we are seeing ships now essentially register to Russia.”
For years, aged shadow vessels, like the Marinera, have provided a lifeline to states like Venezuela, Iran and Russia, as well as to nonstate actors like drug cartels, allowing them to evade sanctions by covertly shipping oil around the world. The ships often fly flags of convenience from places like the Cook Islands, or no flag at all, masking the involvement of the countries employing them.
“The whole point of the shadow fleet previously — there was this element of plausible deniability for the Russians,” Mr. Meade said. “It was opaquely owned out of a shell company in Dubai. It was registered to a Seychelles trust. It said it had insurance, but nobody saw any real paperwork. These were not things Russia wanted to say were our ships.”
Such a scheme, though, also made the ships vulnerable.
American officials said the Guyana flag that the Bella 1 was registered under was fake. That made it a stateless vessel susceptible to boarding under international law when the Coast Guard approached the ship in the Caribbean Sea late on Dec. 20. The vessel is believed to have been heading to pick up oil in Venezuela before it turned around and fled.
As the Coast Guard gave chase, the ship was added to the Russian Maritime Register of Shipping. Russia then made a formal diplomatic request that the United States stop its pursuit.
“The risk if you board a vessel flagged in the Cook Islands is minuscule because the Cook Islands are just not going to retaliate in any way,” said Elisabeth Braw, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who has written about shadow fleets. “But if you board a Russia-flagged vessel, you should have thought about it before going ahead,” because the risk of retaliation is much higher.
The deterrence, this time, didn’t work.
Moscow dispatched a Russian naval vessel, presumably to provide an escort. But the U.S. military boarded the tanker anyway on Wednesday, as American forces intercepted the ship before any Russian vessels arrived.
What Russia might do next is unclear. The Russian government’s initial response was muted, with terse statements put out by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Transport.
The tepid reaction comes as Moscow invests in improving relations with President Trump, who has been leading an effort to broker an end to the war in Ukraine and has at times sided with Moscow’s demands. In recent months, Russia has deliberately played down matters of controversy between Russia and the United States, looking to avoid spoiling the rapprochement.
For years, the Kremlin has denied using shadow vessels to transport energy products, even as experts have identified hundreds of ships employed by Russia to do just that. An analysis published two years into the war against Ukraine by the Kyiv School of Economics found that nearly 70 percent of Russia’s oil was being transported by shadow tankers, a phenomenon that began in 2022 as a response by Moscow to Western sanctions.
By putting its flags on ships, Russia is now “saying we are connected to the shadow fleet,” Ms. Braw said.
The Marinera had been subjected to sanctions by the United States for transporting Iranian oil, and the ship is not known to have carried Russian oil in recent years, according to data from Kpler and TankerTrackers.com, two companies that monitor global oil shipments.
While the United States seized that vessel without incident, Russia has been more aggressive about protecting shadow fleet ships that are closer to its shores.
Last May the Estonian authorities attempted to stop a tanker called the Jaguar, which was in the Baltic Sea and which Estonia had deemed stateless. Russia sent a fighter jet as a show of force to protect the ship, which had previously loaded Russian oil and sailed to India. The Estonian Navy escorted the ship to Russian waters.
“There has been a lot of contention in Europe about what to do with these tankers,” said Gonzalo Saiz Erausquin, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a defense and security think tank in Britain. “They have never taken such a hard step.”
The European Union and Britain have imposed sanctions on nearly 600 shadow vessels linked to Russia’s illicit oil trade. After a series of episodes in which shadow vessels were linked to damage inflicted on undersea cables, countries have also begun to resort to military action.
In December 2024, Finnish commandos commandeered an oil tanker suspected of severing several cables, and last October the French Navy boarded a suspected shadow oil tanker.
Ms. Braw said the U.S. action to take control of the Marinera, while probably legal, could have unintended consequences, including potentially putting American ships in danger.
“On the oceans what is clear is that what is legal was not always wise,” she said. “What it does is send a message to every other country in the world, especially countries less law-abiding than, say, Scandinavia, that they can take action against vessels on the high seas, and who is going to stop them?”
and Milana Mazaeva contributed reporting.
Paul Sonne is an international correspondent, focusing on Russia and the varied impacts of President Vladimir V. Putin’s domestic and foreign policies, with a focus on the war against Ukraine.
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