Baltic companies exposed for supplying fuel to Putin’s “shadow fleet”
28 October 15:19
A network of companies from Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia refueled tankers of the Russian “shadow fleet”, which Russia uses to circumvent sanctions and export oil to other countries.
This is stated in an investigation by the Lithuanian public media company LRT, "Komersant Ukrainian" reports.
According to the journalists, the tankers were provided with fuel by the Fast Bunkering group of companies, which specializes in this. Two refueling vessels Rina and Zircone were used for this purpose. Between June 2024 and March 2025, they refueled 286 tankers in different parts of the Baltic Sea. Of these, at least 159 were vessels that called at Russian ports shortly before or after refueling.
Anatoliy Kravtsev, an analyst at the Kyiv School of Economics, analyzed the data presented by the journalists and concluded that at least 20 tankers had clear signs of belonging to the Russian “shadow fleet.” “In particular, these vessels did not have insurance coverage from any member of the International Group of P&I Clubs, and their owners and management companies were registered outside the jurisdiction of the Oil Price Restriction Coalition,” Kravtsev said. Formally, none of the tankers refueled were under direct sanctions at the time, but some of them were later added to the EU, US and UK sanctions lists, LRT notes.
At the same time, according to S&P Global, from April 2023 to April 2024, at least 3,100 tanker refueling operations were carried out by the Russian “shadow fleet” off the coast of Malta, Greece, Spain (Gibraltar), the Netherlands, and other European countries.
Also, as a Reuters investigation showed, a small insurance company from New Zealand, Maritime Mutual, helped transport oil from Russia and Iran by sea. It provided insurance for almost every sixth tanker in Russia’s “shadow fleet.” The company is run by 75-year-old Briton Paul Rankin and his family members. According to the CREA research center, since 2018, Maritime Mutual-insured vessels have transported oil and oil products from Iran and Russia worth at least $18.2 billion and $16.7 billion, respectively.
According to Reuters, the New Zealand authorities have begun an investigation into the company’s activities, including searches of its offices in Auckland and Christchurch. The investigation is conducted jointly with the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. After the start of the investigation, Maritime Mutual announced that it would stop insuring ships belonging to Russia’s “shadow fleet”.
