Russia’s “ghost” fleet – how Moscow transports weapons and oil (bypassing sanctions) under the eyes of the West

The Mediterranean Sea is “haunted” by a ghost fleet of Russian ships carrying weapons and oil, fueling the conflict in Ukraine and violating Kremlin sanctions.

In the past two years, immediately after the aggression against Kiev, a group of ships began to shuttle between the Syrian port of Tartus and the Russian port of Novorossisk on the Black Sea. Experts from the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), the largest British think-tank on defense and security issues, monitored their movements and shared the results with the publication Il Corriere.

That route, renamed the “Sirian Express”, was used to retrieve war material left over from Syria after Russia’s intervention alongside the Assad regime in the country’s civil war, and route it via the Novorossisk railway to operations on Ukrainian front.

In recent weeks, however, something has changed. At the end of February, with transmitters switched off, Sparta IV left the port of Tartus: under this name sails a Russian ship that is officially a civilian cargo ship, but unofficially belongs to the Ministry of Defense in Moscow. Sparta IV reached the Bosphorus, headed for the Black Sea, only to turn left: a behavior that can only be explained by the fear of being sunk by the Ukrainian navy sailing in those waters.

Later, Sparta IV headed to the West and crossed the entire Mediterranean, passing through the Channel of Sicily (but remaining permanently in international waters), but also on this route a strange thing was noticed: the ship was escorted for a long time by a Russian frigate, Grigorovici . If it was carrying civilian cargo, there would be no need for a military escort: hence the only plausible conclusion would be that there was sensitive material on board.

Sparta IV then passed through the Strait of Gibraltar and headed north, arriving at the end of March in the Russian port of Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea: if she unloaded the military material for Ukraine there, it means that this armament was subsequently transported overland, on EU territory, Kaliningrad being therefore an exclave.

After being anchored for three weeks in the Baltic Sea with its transmitters switched off, the Russian ship put out to sea again and last week reappeared in the Denmark Strait heading for the Mediterranean, bound for Tartus. Which means that the Russian ships – there are at least four of the Sparta type – have opened a new, much riskier route that bypasses our waters and heads for the Atlantic.

But, in addition to the activities of the “Sirian Express”, the Kremlin’s phantom fleet of oil tankers, registered under other flags, also operates in the Mediterranean Sea, from Panama to Liberia and Gabon. There are oil tankers that clandestinely export Russian crude oil using a very risky system: the black gold is transshipped in the middle of the sea onto other oil tankers and the corresponding payment is also made at sea. These operations take place in four well-defined areas of the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea: off the Romanian port of Constanța, in the Gulf of Laconia (from Greece), off the coast of Malta and at Ceuta, near the Strait of Gibraltar.

The system poses a great risk to the environment, compounded by the fact that the ghost fleet consists of old ships operating without insurance and outside maritime regulations. Crude oil that leaves Russia in this way is taken to India or China to be refined and then returns to European markets in complete defiance of sanctions. A method that allows Putin to keep his country’s economy afloat and finance the war in Ukraine: without oil revenues, everything would collapse. In addition, this gives the Kremlin access to dollar revenues that it uses to buy gold and stabilize the ruble.

All these are operations that take place literally under the nose of the West: moreover, in the last few days, the European Commission decided to shed light on the problem and prepare a report that will be presented to the Council. Although blocking the Russian “ghost ships” would present the risk of a further escalation of the situation with Moscow.

(Material produced with the support of Rador Radio Romania)