THE UK has sanctioned 100 tankers today, its biggest ever package of sanctions against Russia’s dark fleet and alerting compliance professionals across the global maritime industry that trade with UK-based companies.
With these new sanctions, the UK says it has sanctioned more dark fleet vessels than any other country.
Source: Finnish Border Guard / There have been several notable cable cutting incidents in the Baltic Sea recently, including that of Eagle S (pictured with Finnish coastguard).
Alongside those vessels targeted are several businesses, including Ro Marine and Soglasie. Ro Marine has been accused of providing insurance without the appropriate licence or registration by the Norwegian Financial Supervisory Authority and was ordered to “stop illegal activities”.
Four people have been charged by Norwegian authorities as a result.
Russian insurer Soglasie, also added to the UK list today, was only recently listed as an approved insurer by the Indian Directorate General of Shipping, in another example of shipping’s ongoing bifurcation.
It joins fellow sanctioned entities Ingosstrakh and Alfastrakhovanie on the approved list, proving that what is deemed valid insurance depends on where you sit along widening geopolitical fault lines.
Now that several nations, including the EU, have said they will start demanding insurance information from vessels in their waters, the concept of the validity of blue cards is becoming just as important as it is subjective.
Both Ro Marine and Soglasie have been sanctioned because they either benefit from or support the Russian government through business in a strategic sector, the UK Treasury said, namely the financial services sector.
Joining them on the list are businesses Nord Axis and BX (Bellatrix Energy), which is also sanctioned by the US.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer will make the announcement at a meeting of the Joint Expeditionary Force in Oslo, which includes Estonia, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the UK.
Starmer’s office accused Russia’s dark fleet not just of “bankrolling the Kremlin’s illegal war in Ukraine”, but also of damaging undersea infrastructure through “reckless seafaring”.
There have been several notable cable cutting incidents in the Baltic Sea over the past few months, including that of Eagle S (IMO: 9329760), which appears on Lloyd’s List Intelligence’s dark fleet watch list.
The protection of subsea infrastructure is expected to be a key part of the leaders’ discussion at the JEF, which monitors 22 areas of interest including the English Channel, Baltic Sea and Kattegat through the Nordic Warden reaction system.
The aim of this latest and biggest set of sanctions is to increase pressure on Russia and achieve a “just and sustainable peace in Ukraine”, Starmer said.
“The threat from Russia to our national security cannot be underestimated, that is why we will do everything in our power to destroy his shadow fleet operation, starve his war machine of oil revenues and protect the subsea infrastructure that we rely on for our everyday lives.
“My government will safeguard working people from paying the price from the costly threat Putin’s fleet poses to UK critical national infrastructure and the environment,” he said.
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We have provided the full list of tankers sanctioned by the UK below.
