SANCTIONS targeting shipping as a means of achieving foreign and economic policy goals are not new.

Nor are the deceptive shipping practices that have been deployed to circumvent those sanctions.

What has changed is the speed and volume of the economic weaponry being deployed and, as a result, the complexity of the risk and compliance landscape through which the nearly 12bn tonnes of global seaborne trade navigates annually.

The consequences of that shift are likely to outlast the sanctions regimes themselves.

While today’s shadow fleet may ultimately be removed via political agreements, the lifting of sanctions does not automatically result in the long-term absence of shadow fleet risk.

Nor does it address the fundamental weaknesses exposed in the regulatory, risk and registration systems that govern the maritime domain.

The shadow fleet has flourished because operators have managed to exploit the vulnerabilities and weak oversight of the system that governs the maritime domain.

Fraudulent maritime service providers, including fake insurers issuing false documentation were never the end game. It was a means to an end.

If the recent trend of shadow fleet ships heading to a more permanent and secure home under the Russian flag continues, then shipping and governments will have to re-think their assumptions about what happens next.

Russia has been taking more aggressive countermeasures to protect shadow fleet operations of late. While the EU and UK may think that flag registries are a point of vulnerability and a potential lever for sanctions enforcement, dealing with Russia is not the same as dealing with a fraudulent Gabon register.

The shadow fleet, fake flags, invented insurance: these are all symptoms of a broken system in need of reform.

But if Russia decides to end this era of plausible deniability and take direct control of its exports, then we are no longer dealing with a shadow fleet. Instead, we will have created a permanent parallel fleet operating outside of the global maritime rules-based order.

Richard Meade
Editor-in-chief, Lloyd’s List

Click here to view the latest Lloyd’s List Daily Briefing