Only 43 of 508 Russian tankers are under joint Western sanctions
29 May 14:43
Robin J. Brooks, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former chief economist at the International Institute of Finance, has released alarming data on the lack of coordination between the EU, the UK and the US in sanctions against Russian oil tankers. He wrote about this in his blog, according to "Komersant Ukrainian".
According to Brooks’ analysis, as of May 28, 2025, the United States has imposed sanctions against 216 Russian oil tankers, the EU against 319 vessels, and the United Kingdom against 269. In total, 508 Russian tankers are under sanctions, excluding duplication.
In total, according to the GUR, the Russian shadow fleet currently numbers up to a thousand vessels. Thus, our Ukrainian partners have imposed sanctions on only half of them. But the situation is even worse.
The most striking thing is that only 43 vessels are simultaneously sanctioned by all three jurisdictions – the EU, the UK and the US. This is less than 10% of the total number of sanctioned tankers.
Brooks explains that this situation is partly due to different approaches of politicians: some prefer to sanction as many vessels as possible and therefore avoid those already under sanctions by other countries.
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According to the analyst, his research on oil tanker activity does not confirm the effectiveness of this approach. Coordinated overlapping sanctions are much more effective in stopping Russian tanker activity than unilateral measures.
“There is a huge room for increasing the overlap of sanctions, which maximizes their effectiveness,”
– the expert notes.
The expert adds that although oil sanctions against Russia have been discussed for a long time, they have only come into effect this year.
As you can see from the chart, it was only in 2025 that the EU, the UK, and the US began to aggressively impose sanctions on Russian oil tankers.
But Brooks believes that the effectiveness of sanctions will be quite high soon.
“The evidence of the effectiveness of sanctions that we have – I will write about this tomorrow – is encouraging. The US sanctions are very effective in stopping the activities of the shadow fleet, while the EU and UK sanctions – when applied together – also have a serious impact,”
– the expert notes.
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