The continuation of the activities of the aggressor’s large-tonnage tanker fleet should be under constant monitoring, since structures of civilized countries of the world are still involved in the relevant operations, despite the corresponding sanctions risks.
Therefore, it is worth separately investigating the group of Russian large-tonnage tankers, which still use the Panama flag and constitute a significant part of the relevant fleet.
This group includes vessels built 17-20 years ago, including “Abhra” IMO number 9282041, “Anaya” IMO number 9326885, “Bellaris” IMO number 9332614, “Briont” IMO number 9252955, “Cauveri” IMO number 9282508, “Charminar” IMO number 9318022, “Ethera” IMO number 9387279, “Horae” IMO number 9413004, “Oneiroi” IMO number 9390587, “Tagor” IMO number 9282481, “Toa Payoh” IMO number 9298492, “Tyche 1” IMO number 9308077 and “Versa” IMO number 9379301.
These vessels, built primarily on Korean shipyards have repeatedly changed flags and names before their current regime. Now their crews are mixed, and among the ship’s officers, in addition to aggressor’s citizens, representatives of India, Georgia, Latvia and Pakistan have been noticed, and Latvian crew members, as a rule, have a second Russian citizenship or are ethnic Russians.
All these tankers are actively exporting Russian oil from the ports of the Black Sea, the Baltic and the Far East of Russia. For example, as of the end of February 2025, “Ethera” is heading from Turkish waters to Novorossiysk, “Anaya” is heading in the same direction, but from Brazil, “Cauveri” and “Versa” are heading from Novorossiysk to India, “Briont” is heading to Primorsk from Turkey, and “Tyche 1” is following the same direction from the Baltic.
“Abhra” follows from the Baltic ports of the Russian Federation to Egypt, “Bellaris” heads towards the Kerch Strait from Indonesia, “Horae” is located in Ust-Luga, and “Tagor” is headed to the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It is noteworthy that two tankers declared that they were supposedly heading to Tallinn, these are “Charminar” from Las Palmas and “Oneiroi” from India, at the same time it is not excluded that such a port of destination was declared in order to “simplify attention” to the vessel in the Baltic Straits.
Moreover, all of the above vessels were noticed not only in the systematic shutdown of automatic location systems (AIS), but also periodically used for transshipment of cargo from ship to ship, which is extremely dangerous for the marine environment and shipping safety. The areas of such transshipment for Russian tankers traditionally serve as the Gulf of Finland and the Kerch Strait, where incidents with oil spills and even tanker fleet disasters have been observed repeatedly.
The formal shipowners and owners of these ships periodically change, using the jurisdiction of the UAE, India and that Panama itself. At the same time, a significant part of such owners and operators and managers of tankers are just “one-time companies”, dozens of which are registered at the same address, or rather just a mailbox in the same Dubai.
At the same time, maritime databases show that in recent years a significant part of this “Panamanian squadron” of the Russian tanker fleet has been associated with the sanctioned “Fractal Marine DMCC” from the UAE, one of the leading operators of the so-called shadow fleet, which was engaged in the export of Russian oil and petroleum products in 2022-2023.
Then “Fractal Marine DMCC”, together with the Indian “Gatik Ship Management” and the Dubai “Radiating World Shipping Services LLC”, were the leading operators of the Russian tanker fleet, which at the beginning of 2023 numbered about 90 tankers, but has now become significantly larger.
In the first year of full-scale aggression against Ukraine, the $2 billion fleet of oil tankers assembled by “Fractal Marine DMCC” and “Gatik Ship Management” could transport over 40 million barrels of oil and petroleum products.
At the same time, if formal shipowners and operators are being replaced by Russian beneficiaries like socks, then in other areas, namely in the activities of classification societies that turn a blind eye to obvious violations of maritime safety with maritime cargo transshipment and the exclusion of AIS systems, there is a rather unpleasant constancy.
For example, all of the above vessels at different periods, but over the past few years, received technical documents from such structures as the Norwegian “Det Norske Veritas” (DNV), the French “Bureau Veritas”, the Italian “Registro Italiano Navale”, the English “LLoyds Register of Shipping” and the “American Bureau of Shipping” from the USA.
At the same time, although some of the declared tankers as of the end of February 2025 are not included, despite the declared compliance with the register documents, in the register books of these most authoritative and powerful classification structures in the world, at least in relation to “Abhra”, “Anaya”, “Ethera”, “Tyche 1” and “Versa” there is direct confirmation of their use of packages of technical documents issued by “Det Norske Veritas”, and their presence in the lists of this classification society.
At the same time, there is a similar confirmation for the tanker “Briont” regarding its presence in the court books of “Bureau Veritas”, and such involvement of this “Panamanian flotilla” of ship documents from authoritative registers, as well as the use of the relatively authoritative flag of Panama today, significantly simplifies the relevant shipping in favor of the aggressor.
Vessels undergo fewer inspections in transit ports and supposedly manipulate their “technical safety” and “crew labor standards”, which, of course, does not correspond to reality.
Under these conditions, as of today, in addition to the sanctions policy against the Russian tanker fleet, it is necessary to increase efforts to exclude these tankers from the supervision of authoritative classification societies, in particular for already committed safety violations, and to deprive them of flags that are included in the “white lists” by the relevant interstate memorandums.
