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European countries are negotiating large-scale detentions of Russian oil tankers in the Baltic Sea. New legislation is currently being drafted to give these measures legal force, Politico reports.
The publication says that Finnish authorities seized the tanker Eagle S in December in a large-scale operation, suspecting it of damaging an underwater power line connecting Estonia with Finland. The seizure of the vessel, which was carrying 100 barrels of oil from St. Petersburg, marked the opening of a new front in the secret war between Russia and the West.
According to Politico sources, proposals being considered include using international law to seize ships for environmental or piracy reasons. If that fails, countries could act independently, jointly enacting new national laws to seize more ships in distant maritime zones.
“Almost 50 percent of the sanctioned trade [of Russian offshore oil] passes through the Gulf of Finland,” said Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna.
According to him, there are environmental threats, "there are attacks on our underwater infrastructure."
“The question now is… what can we do with these ships?” he told Politico. “We can’t block the entire sea, but we can control more… There are a lot of possibilities.”
The talks illustrate Europe's growing frustration that Russia continues to transport its oil and evade Western sanctions by relying on an ever-growing "shadow fleet" — aging vessels with unclear ownership and unknown insurance.
In doing so, Moscow has been able to preserve a key lifeline for its military efforts in Ukraine, given that oil and gas account for about half of the Kremlin’s revenue. And all of this is happening right under Europe’s nose, on its own waterways.
The growing number of incidents creates the need to pursue tankers that sail with impunity in European waters - and not only through sanctions, which have proven too weak.
“We are witnessing that… there are some ways to backtrack” on Western sanctions against Russia, Lithuanian Energy Minister Zhygimantas Vaičiūnas told Politico. “That’s why the counter-shadow fleet measures have really helped achieve results that we are not able to achieve with the sanctions regime.”
In addition to the EU's proposals to blacklist 74 shadow fleet tankers, Nordic and Baltic countries are separately discussing how they can legally begin seizing more Russian-linked vessels, officials and diplomats said.
