Dark Waters Initiative

Dark Waters is a civil initiative to shed public light on the Russian shadow fleet and its enablers.

Contact: [email protected]

[Dark Waters Initiative @darkwaters_init]

Thank you @Michellewb_

DWI is currently perfecting our #shadowfleet tracker. #Focus: the #BalticSea and the Danish straits - an obligatory passage for more than half of Russian seaborne crude exports.

Launch soon! Stay tuned

[Michelle Wiese Bockmann @Michellewb_]

A new OSINT source for those tracking sanctioned ships: FleetLeaks. https://t.co/PIeOKuIZ8S. Joins outfits like Sketchy Boats and @darkwaters_init Dark Waters Initiative in shining a light on what's happening out there. As I always say: sunlight is the best disinfectant

[auonsson @auonsson]

Russia opens a new dangerous chapter in Baltic Sea? - STS

STS entails moving oil (usually) from one tanker to another, at sea. It is done to obfuscate origin and round sanctions.

Known hotspots are intl waters of Greece and Malaysia.
Now, it seems to take root in Baltic Sea.

[Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en]

Chancellor Merz:

To cut off the sources of Russian war financing, we are planning further measures against the shadow fleet.

[FleetLeaks @FleetLeaks]

Vessel Spotlight: LADY LOUISE 🇵🇦 Panama

Detected near Primorsk Approach Waters — no port visits recorded.

Full dossier: https://t.co/AiWVGlDvwv

#VesselSpotlight #FleetLeaks #ShadowFleet

[Elie Tenenbaum @ElieTenenbaum]

Moins spectaculaire que ce qui se passe au Moyen-Orient mais la preuve que l’Europe est en train de changer de gabarit dans son interaction stratégique en mer face à la Russie et flotte fantôme #Ghostfleet #Sanctions

[Eye Think @EyeThink_]

[RUSSIA - SHADOW FLEET]

❌🚢French and Belgian naval forces have boarded and detained a tanker suspected of being part of Russia’s "shadow fleet" in the North Sea, escorting it into Zeebrugge pending investigation.

➡️The operation reflects growing Western efforts to disrupt opaque shipping networks used to evade sanctions on Russian oil.

[SONARROW @SONARROW_OSINT]

https://t.co/N37yw5CKN1

[Dark Waters Initiative @darkwaters_init]

Shut it down!

[Robin Brooks @robin_j_brooks]

Brilliant article on the shadow fleet of oil tankers in the ⁦@WSJ⁩. When Putin invaded Ukraine, Western oil tankers transported 70% of Russian oil in the Baltic. Today that number is down to 30% because the shadow fleet’s grown so much. Shut it down! https://t.co/UNJ13tghud

[Le20h-France Télévisions @le20hfrancetele]

🔴🗣️ "L'Ukraine a réussi a repousser les forces russes en Mer Noire. La Russie a beaucoup perdu en mer" analyse l'Amiral Vaujour, chef d’état-major de la @MarineNationale. #JT20h

[Dark Waters Initiative @darkwaters_init]

Sanctioned tankers are routinely shifted between shell companies in Turkey, UAE, Hong Kong & the Marshall Islands.

DWI’s mapping shows the “ad hoc” operations aren’t random. They’re interconnected pieces of a larger sanctions-evasion ecosystem.

[Jonah @jvb_xyz]

>Russian bureaucrat accidentally puts smuggling partners in the “To:” field instead of “Bcc”
>FT exposes entire ring
>Now we know more about the Nouveau Riche in Monaco and Dubai. Many of these entrepreneurs are in their 30s and 40s

[HELLENIC SHIPPING NEWS Worldwide @HELLENICSHIP]

Cameroon Pledges Crackdown on #Ship Registry #Flagging 13% of Dark #Fleet #Tankers
https://t.co/1Du3hly8r8

[SONARROW @SONARROW_OSINT]

🛰 Both events spotted by 🇪🇺 satellites 👇

@gchampeau @malte_humpert

[Tom Wilson @thomas_m_wilson]

RUSSIAN OIL: This chart tells you everything you need about the network of companies formerly known as Coral that have moved at least $90bn of Russian oil since the Ukraine invasion...and they all used the same private email server
w/ @xtophercook et al
https://t.co/nAQwHll2rm

[Michelle Wiese Bockmann @Michellewb_]

The game of flag governance whack-a-mole seems to have been going on forever and continues -- at pace. The days when St Kitts & Nevis, Gabon, Guinea Bissau, Barbados and Cook Islands et al emerged from nowhere to flag 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, even 100+ dark fleet tankers are but distant memories. They've all kicked out these tankers.

That led to the dark fleet circling the drain of poor quality ship registries, or any number of fraudulent registries. (We identified the rise of a 20th fraudulent registry Equatorial Guinea last week). Many of the 'legitimate' registries providing regulatory refuge were so sub-standard they might as well not be flagged anywhere, and are effectively stateless anyway.

As the graph below shows, Sierre Leone appears to be the last man standing after Cameroon's pledged crackdown on the sanctioned, elderly tonnage clogging its ship registry. Cameroon's ship registry has no functioning website or contact details. The registry was a victim of a cyber attack, one government official reportedly said in offering an explanation for flagging sanctioned tankers.

The sudden influx of tankers to the Cameroon registry over past months follows U.S. government-led boardings and interdictions of nine falsely flagged, stateless tankers in the Caribbean, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans since December, as well as France’s detention of the tanker Grinch in the Mediterranean last month.

Flag-hopping to Cameroon or Russia (read that story here : https://t.co/Kv2tIQCXyM) has accelerated as coastal governments' tolerance for the stateless tankers sailing through their waters assuming the right of innocent passage has lowered. 14 coastal governments from the EU and UK jointly declared on January 26 that they would take action against unsafe Russia-trading tankers without a flag or using deceptive shipping practices. By reflagging to Russia and Cameroon the dozen or so falsely flagged ships I was tracking weekly through the English Channel all but ceased now they have found somewhere to land.

Noting the switch of these stateless tankers to Cameroon, EU got in touch with that country's government. The maritime administration subsequently pledged to deregister all sanctioned dark fleet ships. @WindwardAI counted 121 EU/UK/US-sanctioned Cameroon-flagged tankers this week (that have broadcast AIS this year), so that's a lot to be leaving. As of Feb 19, the Equasis database isn't showing any of these tankers classified as "Cameroon - FALSE" so I will be keeping an eye out in coming days to see if Cameroon's maritime administration follows up on its pledge.

Post here: https://t.co/JRlkOd5puu

[Windward @WindwardAI]

What is a zombie vessel?

It’s a vessel that steals the identity of a decommissioned ship to evade sanctions. @Michellewb_ tells @BBCNews that the costs of intercepting these tankers are high, but the threshold for intervention is building.

https://t.co/snRp0T4oMT

[Dark Waters Initiative @darkwaters_init]

💪💪

[France Diplomacy 🇫🇷🇪🇺 @francediplo_EN]

"Circumventing European sanctions has a cost. Russia can no longer finance its war with impunity with a shadow fleet sailing in our waters. The tanker Grinch has left French waters after payment of millions of euros, in addition to three weeks of costly detention in Fos-sur-Mer. We will continue in this vein."
– @jnbarrot

[Michelle Wiese Bockmann @Michellewb_]

@WindwardAI identifies its 20th fraudulent registry used by sanctioned tankers. Welcome to the club Equatorial Guinea!

[Dark Waters Initiative @darkwaters_init]

"Fo shur"

[Dan the “Shadow Tanker Bonker” @realLangerDan]

This is why we must act.

[Dan the “Shadow Tanker Bonker” @realLangerDan]

This is why we must act.

[Lloyd's List @LloydsList]

Cameroon’s government-run ship register has been booming as a result of other flags ejecting sanctioned tonnage under pressure from the EU. Now the Yaoundé government is under pressure to crackdown as well
https://t.co/iAcj5mLGsn

[UNITED24 Media @United24media]

Russia’s shadow-fleet tankers aren’t just dodging sanctions—they’re tools of hybrid war.

These ships can move weapons, run covert ops, and even threaten undersea cables across the Baltic and beyond.

🔗 https://t.co/OfIleHA2MP