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LUXEMBOURG — The European Commission will look into ways to deal with Russia’s shadow oil fleet as part of the next package of sanctions, Sweden’s Foreign Minister Tobias Billström said in an interview Monday.
The shadow fleet, which consists of an estimated 1,400 ships with opaque ownership, is “not only aiding Russia with circumventing the sanctions, but it’s also a clear environmental threat,” Billström told POLITICO and a number of other media outlets on the margins of the EU’s Foreign Affairs Council meeting in Luxembourg.
The fleet, he stressed, “is such a large problem … when it comes to the money that it fuels the war chest of Russia.”
However, analysts warn that drastic actions such as blocking ships from EU waters could be construed by Moscow as escalation.
According to Billström, the European Commission and the EU’s diplomatic arm will now “sit down and make a thorough run through of all the elements of the shadow fleet and what can be done.”
This will be followed by a Commission report to the European Council.
Flag and harbor states would be approached, according to the Swedish minister, and there could be “actions against owners, operators, insurance companies in [any] third country that Russia today uses to make the shadow fleet possible.”
It would be the first time the EU has looked into this sanctions loophole since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Billström said “the time has now come to end that,” adding: “The shadow fleet has been has been so useful by Russia because it has flown — or rather floated — below the radar.”
