The infamous Pushpa, a unflagged tanker believed to be run by Russia, has been making trouble in the Baltic again. French authorities have just detained the ship to investigate whether it’s been violating sanctions, but its activities may be worse than that. Danish authorities suspect that some of the drones that forced a temporary closure of the Copenhagen airport in late September were fired from the ship.
Russia’s shadow fleet, operating under Moscow’s orders but nominally registered in other countries, has become even more aggressive in Baltic waters than before. Danish pilots, who see the ships’ behavior up close like no one else, report increasingly troubling practices. It’s no surprise that European leaders are taking no chances during their summit in Copenhagen in the first days of October.
Russia is pioneering new forms of gray-zone aggression, as passengers traveling to or from Copenhagen’s Kastrup airport and Oslo’s Gardermoen airport had to witness on Sept. 23. That day, both airports were forced to close for several hours after drones appeared nearby. Dozens of flights had to be canceled or diverted.
But where did the drones come from? Danish authorities swiftly identified three vessels that may have served as launchpads: a freighter flagged in Russia, another freighter partly crewed by Russians—and the Pushpa. Danish investigative journalists subsequently reported that the Norway-domiciled firm that owns Oslo Carrier 3, the partly Russian-crewed ship, has a branch in Kaliningrad that has long worked with the Russian paramilitary outfit RSB Group.
The Pushpa, in turn, is no stranger to the Baltic Sea or the Danish Straits. It makes regular journeys between Russia’s Baltic Sea ports and the countries that buy Russian oil transported by the shadow fleet. Before it was detained in France, the ship was en route to the Indian port of Vadinar. The Pushpa is sanctioned by Western governments, and in April, it was even sailing without flag registration, perhaps shipping’s most cardinal sin. (It was using the name Kiwala; name changes are common among shadow vessels.)
On April 11, as the Kiwala was sailing in the Gulf of Finland, Estonian authorities detained it on the unsurprising grounds that it was sailing without flag registration. When the tanker arrived in port, the Estonians identified a remarkable 40 deficiencies. Two weeks later, after most of the faults had been fixed and Djibouti had said it would temporarily provide flag registration, they released the tanker. Since then, the infamous ship has kept sailing through the Baltic Sea, using a variety of flags. At the time of writing, it appeared to be using the flag of Malawi, though shipping databases list this as a false registration.
Russian shadow vessels are becoming ever-more brazen on their journeys in and out of the Baltic Sea. That doesn’t just mean sailing without proper insurance, without a flag, or in such poor state that an anchor may fall out and damage undersea cables. At times, it also involves turning down pilotage in the tricky Danish Straits.
“The number of ships not taking pilots is increasing,” Bjarne Skinnerup told me.
Skinnerup is a maritime pilot, one of a small group of men with the skills needed to negotiate the narrow and crowded straits that form a crucial part of the Baltic-Atlantic passage. Traditionally, as with other tricky crossings, ships would hire a local pilot to ensure safety, but Russian-linked shadow vessels are increasingly cutting corners.
Even when the Danish authorities diplomatically suggest to the crews that they might like to request pilotage, many simply refuse, Skinnerup told me. “We see at least five … a day,” he said. “Before the invasion of Ukraine, there were perhaps two or three such ships a day.”
No pilot, insurance that may not be worth the paper it’s written on, and flag states that are in no position to assist in case of an accident: That’s a highly dangerous combination for any coastal state, and especially for Denmark and other Baltic Sea countries, in whose waters the shadow traffic is particularly intense.
And that’s not the only alarming activity involving Russian shadow vessels these days. The pilots are also seeing new practices that suggest that some shadow vessels are not just aging rust buckets crisscrossing the seas to deliver oil to the world and revenues to Russia. For example, Skinnerup told me, an increasing number of these ships don’t carry a bill of lading, the crucial document that lists the sender and recipient of any cargo—and what that cargo is.
Are some of the companies involved with the shadow vessels getting so comfortable that they don’t even bother with crucial paperwork? Or are the bills of lading missing because some of these companies are trying to hide something? We don’t know, because shadow fleet owners hide behind brass-plate addresses in places such as Goa and the Seychelles.
Another trend that Skinnerup and other Danish pilots have observed in recent weeks is even more troubling: A few shadow vessels have carried surprise passengers. A few times, Skinnerup said, such unofficial passengers represent the cargo’s owner. Such passengers are iffy, but they don’t pose an immediate risk to other countries. The other surprise passengers that Danish pilots have seen do cause an obvious risk: “We’re seeing uniformed personnel carrying the camouflage uniform of the Russian Navy,” Skinnerup said. “When I’m on these ships, I do what I can to see the crew list. I want to see what I’m dealing with.”
But the uniformed officers are not on the crew lists. Skinnerup believes that the unofficial passengers are mapping Danish infrastructure.
“Russian shadow vessels may be using the Baltic approach to attack, harass, and map maritime and land-based infrastructure because they can do it unnoticed by using freedom of navigation,” said retired Rear Adm. Nils Wang, a former commander of the Danish Navy. The Danish Straits count as international waters—where coastal states lack jurisdiction—rather than territorial waters.
The pilots’ observations of uniformed Russian personnel may also have something to do with another highly concerning development in Danish waters. The Russian landing ship Aleksandr Shabalin has inexplicably been lurking off the southern island of Langeland, the Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet reports. The island is located just north of the German coast.
By extraordinary coincidence, European Union leaders had long been scheduled to meet in Copenhagen on October, and the meeting has gone ahead—with heavy security precautions.
But not even Europe’s most powerful states can ban Russian-linked vessels from the Danish Straits. They also can’t change the fact that the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the constitution of the oceans, isn’t made for deliberately borderline actions of the kind seen in recent months, however hostile the intent.
Still, Danish authorities, companies with digital monitoring tools, and the world’s assembled sleuths and supporters of the global maritime order can keep a close eye on the shadow vessels and any other unbidden visitors. And when they spot mystery passengers, they can call them out, whoever the visitors are.
In addition, Wang told me, “we could stand up a fleet of fast, uncrewed surface vessels with appropriate sensors and effectors to give shipping passing through our waters the feeling that they are under surveillance, exactly like cities do with CCTV cameras in central urban areas.”
Trying to track Russia’s shadow fleet is a frustrating task, especially since Western monitoring of it is largely classified. But the Danish pilots are perhaps the only group to have seen their activities up close. We should listen to them.
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