France seizes fifth Russian shadow-fleet tanker in the Mediterranean
The French navy boarded and seized a Russian oil tanker near Sicily in the Mediterranean, France’s fifth such interdiction of a vessel it links to Moscow’s “shadow fleet” — the network of aging, opaquely owned tankers Russia uses to move oil outside Western sanctions and price caps. Russia’s embassy in France denounced the seizure as “another case of piracy.”
The action fits a wider European effort to choke off the revenue that funds Russia’s war in Ukraine by targeting the ships that carry its crude. European navies and coast guards have increasingly stopped, inspected, or detained shadow-fleet vessels over registration, insurance, and safety irregularities. Each seizure raises the operational cost and legal risk of the trade, though the fleet’s size means individual detentions chip at the margins rather than halting the flow.