Until US President Donald Trump reversed the thrust of his sanctions policy on Russian oil on October 10, Ukraine's Western allies had been ramping up their use of international maritime law, according to a report by Al Jazeera.
Michelle Bockmann, an analyst at maritime intelligence company Windward, said the goal is "to disrupt, deter and make it more expensive and costly for Russia to logistically get their oil to market on these ships, and that's definitely happening." She spoke at the 49th Conference on Oceans Law and Policy in Athens.
Western sanctions not only ban Russian oil purchases in sanctioning territories but also forbid Western-insured tankers from selling Russian oil to third parties except at below-market prices. Since sanctions were imposed in 2022, Russia has been exporting about half of its crude oil through a "shadow fleet" of tankers not owned or insured by Western institutions and often not complying with environmental and safety standards.
Article 110 of UNCLOS allows coastal states to inspect vessels, a right that the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union have now begun to exercise. "A lot of these ships were using fraudulent registries, and they were stateless," Bockmann said, noting that under UNCLOS, authorities can now act instead of simply hailing vessels and letting them proceed.
Russian officials view this as a serious escalation. Nikolai Patrushev, chairman of the Russian Maritime Board, told officials during a visit to China on October 12 that "Western countries are trying to organise the interception of our vessels. London and Brussels are drawing up plans to blockade the Baltic Sea and the straits leading into it. Other key shipping routes are also under threat."
The stepped-up enforcement comes 45 months after the European Union, the US and other Group of Seven states imposed oil sanctions on Russia, and has reduced Moscow's room to circumvent the measures.