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the industry a year ago; I was at a conference, and we got together at a bar, talked for hours. And I asked him, what’s your take on this? And he said, I don’t buy any of this; you have to consider the fact that these Russian shadow fleet ships that are willing to evade sanctions are not the best ships, they have the worst crews, they are ships that would fail any kind of safety inspection. “In a situation like that it is therefore no surprise that anchors fall off the back of a ship. It happens all the time, ships drop an anchor and then drag it for miles and no one is paying attention. That would be in keeping with the quality of the ships that are servicing Russia in this Russian shadow fleet. They’re incompetent, maybe even drunk. It happens all the time.” Anchoring accidents on YouTube are plentiful and in the course of my research I was instructed several times to take a look. Indicative of the quantity and scale of these events is one comment beneath ‘Top 5 Anchor Drop Failures’ that simply says, “I used to enjoy spending time with my children; now I just watch anchor drop fail videos 24 hours a day.” It also provides useful background, countering the argument that the Russians are but a hop and a skip from online annihilation of the West. In reality, the West seems to be doing a pretty good job of it by themselves. Clearly, it is quite easy to drop an anchor by accident, regardless of your competence, blood alcohol level or motivation. What an anchor Our anonymous hyperscaler contact assured me that it isn’t just incompetent Russian sailors losing control of anchors in the sea. The European Subsea Cables Association has documented cable incidents faithfully for years, adding valuable colour to a fairly abstract concept; after all, few of us have spent any meaningful time on container ships or oil tankers. Even fewer of us have seen a subsea cable or been to the bottom of the sea. So, this overview of theirs is notable: “The title of undisputed champion of long-distance anchor dragging belongs to the vessel Clyde S. VanEnkevort, which on April 1st 2018 dragged its 5.5 tonne anchor and 16 tonne chain for 36hrs over 600km, the entire length of Lake Michigan [that’s from London to Zurich] damaging 3no. power cables and 2no. oil pipelines. So evidently, anchors can indeed be
Aerial drone footage of the sanctioned Russian “shadow fleet” tanker “Kairos” near the Bulgarian Black Sea coast.
real evidence that there is any intent on these vessels. They like to give it a nice scary name, call it the Shadow Fleet, but they’re just ships owned by dodgy people flying under dodgy flags who are prepared to transport Russian oil wherever it needs to go.” Shadow fleets are also usually very old ships, poorly maintained, manned by inexperienced or substandard crew. They commonly lack insurance and often practice ‘at-sea transfers’ of oil from one ship to another to hide its origin again, in order to confuse officials. The relative success and endurance of shadow fleets (first emerged in the 1980s operated by Iran, Iraq and Libya) suggests such methods are working. Notably our friend Samanth Subramanian and others he references in his book characterise such officials as historically ‘witless’, which if true, doesn’t help matters. Following the invasion of Ukraine by Russia and the ensuing punitive sanctions imposed by allied partners, the shadow fleet has been joined by a grey fleet, exhibiting all the same characteristics but are not subject to the same sanctions. Dark fleet is also in there, and the European Parliament have tied themselves into knots trying to define all of these. A 2024 briefing document states that “The terms ‘shadow fleet’, ‘dark fleet’ and ‘grey fleet’ have gained prominence following the imposition of sanctions on Russian energy exports, yet their definitions remain inconsistent among experts, leading to confusion.” Anyone notice a pattern here? Doug Madory goes further. Speculation on the effectiveness of shadow fleets amongst industry experts is cynical, at best. “I met an important guy in
The Shadow Fleet
It is tempting to assume the elite, irresistibly named Shadow Fleet is another media creation designed to prey on our predilection for James Bond films and Tom Clancy novels. They certainly sound like the closest thing the modern world has to a pirate confederacy in business suits: a loose armada of anonymous tankers, veteran captains and operators who know every blind spot in the global trading system, moving through the world’s chokepoints like diesel-powered ghosts. Not navies, not merchants, but something in between; highwaymen of the high seas, carrying sanctioned cargo through a maze of deception, forged paperwork and midnight transfers. The elite renegades of global shipping: invisible when they want to be, indispensable when someone needs the rules broken. The A Team of shipping.
Which is objective nonsense, clearly.
Essentially the shadow fleet are defined as a group of tankers that rely on deceptive shipping practices in order to convey sanctioned commodities (usually oil in this case). Such practices include hidden ownership - shell companies, fake names, frequent changes in registration to confuse officials, flag hopping – changing the flag on your ship to confuse officials and turning off trackers – all tankers must use an Automatic Identification System to inform authorities of their location. Cue confused officials. Peter Jamieson, Principal Engineer - Core Engineering Fibre & Subsea - Vice-Chair European Subsea Cables Association at Virgin Media 02 and an authority on the subject, agreed with everyone else, that yes, there’s a potential threat, ‘But there’s no
Volume 48 No.23 SEPTEMBER 2026
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