As Ukraine’s troops battle Russia’s invading army, Ukrainian companies are supplying sailors to help keep Putin’s shadow fleet afloat 

By SourceMaterial and Nathaniel Peutherer

Oleksandr Ilchuk didn’t want to take the job on the Orion. The clapped-out tanker looked like a death trap and the man he was replacing had suffered severe burns in an explosion, but he needed the money. Soon he was regretting the decision. 

The ‘shadow fleet’ of around 667 tankers that export sanctioned oil relies on dilapidated vessels sold off by more respectable shippers. More than half are over two decades old and life on board can be hellish.

The Orion was no exception. The ship was in “terrible condition”, with barely any medical equipment and a crew constantly scrambling with running repairs to keep it afloat, Ilchuk said. 

The drinking water was inadequate, there were few vegetables and in the cockroach-infested kitchens chefs told tales of decade-old meat, recalled Ilchuk, who said he lost 12 kilograms on the voyage. At one point, a corpse in a crate was put aboard for several days until another ship retrieved it.

“I was contemplating suicide—I was willing to do anything just to get out of there,” he told SourceMaterial. “Nobody complains because everyone is afraid of being fired.”

Lloyd’s List, the shipping intelligence company that keeps a register of dark fleet ships, described Orion as “one of the darker of the dark fleet vessels” and “a poster child for the high-risk and fraudulent activities”. Ilchuk got his job on the ship—then carrying sanctioned Venezuelan oil and now serving Russian ports—through Novomar, one of dozens of agencies identified by SourceMaterial providing sailors to the shadow fleet. 

Remarkably, Novomar is based in Ukraine. This investigation found that as Ukrainian troops fight to repel Russia’s invasion on the battlefields of Donbas, Ukrainian companies are providing crewmen to oil tankers offering a lifeline to Russia’s war economy.

By trawling shipping records, satellite images, corporate filings, crew databases and sailors’ social media channels, SourceMaterial uncovered 18 Ukraine-based agencies serving the Russian shadow fleet. Six more agencies are operating from Latvia and Cyprus—EU nations which, like the US and UK, have imposed sanctions on Russian shipping. 

Some 46 tankers moving Russian oil and identified by Lloyd’s List as part of the shadow fleet were crewed by companies from countries with sanctions against Russia.

Doing business with the dark fleet is not always illegal. The EU has sanctioned 68 individual tankers carrying Russian oil and crewing them would breach those measures. Others on the Lloyd’s register are allowed to export Russian oil to non-EU countries provided it is sold below a certain price. 

“Nobody complains because everyone is afraid”

But both legal and illegal exports aid Russia’s war economy and raise issues of national security, as well as environmental concerns, said Gonzalo Saiz, a maritime specialist at the Royal United Services Institute, a London think tank. In October SourceMaterial revealed how shadow fleet ships are routinely dumping oil across the globe. 

In practice, it can be difficult for authorities to take action against companies serving unsanctioned dark fleet ships.

“Crewing agencies can always argue that they knew nothing about the ownership of the ship or its connections to Russia,” Saiz said.

Shadow recruits

In January 2024, Pyotr Nikolaev, a junior engineer, was aboard the Neon, a tanker moving sanctioned Russian oil from the ports of Ust-Luga and Primorsk. 

“The engine room was in terrible condition, the crew were tired,” and there was constant tension between Russian crew and sailors from Georgia, parts of which are occupied by Russia, he said.

Nikolaev—whose contract forbade him to talk about the ship, its location or its cargo—was employed by Moldovan-based Zolos Shipping, part of a network of shadow fleet-linked operators that includes Novomar, the agency that put Ilchuk on the Orion, and Eurobulk, another Ukraine-based agency. 

Zolos is also connected through family ties to Viktor Baransky, a Ukrainian oligarch who was active in “Opposition Platform – For Life”, a pro-Russian political party banned after the outbreak of the war. 

Baransky, sanctioned by the Ukrainian government in 2023 and wanted as a fugitive, has been named in reports as the owner of a fleet of tankers targeted by US authorities for breaching the American embargo against Venezuela—which he has denied. 

Novomar, Eurobulk, Zolos and Baransky did not respond to requests for comment.

‘High risk of injury’

SourceMaterial estimates that between 10,000 and 13,000 sailors work aboard the shadow fleet that trades sanctioned Russian oil. Senior officers tend to be Russian and Ukrainian. Around a third of the men are from the Philippines, according to industry sources. 

On Telegram, the messaging platform favoured by jobbing crewmen, sailors trade information about prospective employers.  

There is “high risk of injury and fire hazards”, said a post about Zolos Shipping on ‘Sea Scams’, a chat group with 10,000 members. Sailors describe agencies withholding their documents and cheating them out of wages.

“Many complaints have been filed” by sailors worried about conditions on ships manned by one Ukrainian-owned agency has crewed dark fleet ships, according to another post, which concludes: “Highly not recommended.”

In another Telegram channel, a newcomer’s question about conditions aboard Omega, a 24-year-old tanker on Lloyd’s List’s shadow fleet register, is answered with images of shipwrecks and laughing emojis.

Many shadow ships are insufficiently insured. Victims like the man injured in the explosion on the Orion, or the family of the man whose body was taken aboard, would have been unlikely to expect compensation, Ilchuk said.  

Orion’s owners could not be reached for comment.

Shadow LNG

It’s not just decrepit old tankers that are being crewed through international agencies. 

In 2022, underwater explosions destroyed Russia’s Nord Stream gas pipeline across the Baltic, leaving the Kremlin increasingly reliant on state-of-the-art tankers to export the fuel in supercooled liquid form. Companies in the European Union are helping to man them. 

In September 2024, Cyprus-based Intercrewing posted vacancies for an oiler and an engineer aboard the Pioneer and the Nova Energy. Both had shortly before been sanctioned by the US for smuggling Russian liquefied natural gas, or LNG, while the UK sanctioned the ships the following week.

Other agencies are crewing dark fleet ship from inside the EU.

In 2023 and 2024, another agency, Lapa—a Latvian subsidiary of Anglo-Norwegian shipping giant Stolt-Nielson—recruited five seafarers to work on three vessels named at the time on Lloyd’s List’s shadow fleet register.

Two of them, Clyde Noble and Sagar Violet, are operated by Cyprus-based Lagosmarine. In December 2024, Lapa, which continues to operate a branch in St Petersburg, advertised four vacancies aboard Lagosmarine ships.

“Sanctions are working, and Russia’s economy is already feeling the impact.”

The posts did not name the vessels, but three of the four tankers in Lagosmarine’s fleet were by then on dark fleet registers and one, Fuga Bluemarine, had been the subject of an Israeli seizure order for allegedly aiding Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, a proscribed terror group in the US and Canada.

Following the seizure order, in October 2023, crew aboard the tanker, who said they had been placed there by Lapa, complained to the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF), a union that represents sailors, about $200,000 in unpaid wages, according to the Seafarers Union of Russia. 

Sailors should “think twice” before taking jobs on the Fuga Bluemarine, an ITF spokeswoman was quoted as saying. 

While there is no suggestion that Lapa was involved in any illegality, the vacancies were still online after Sagar Violet was sanctioned by the UK on 17 December, and when the US sanctioned Lagosmarine on 10 January. They were taken down on 31 January after Lapa was contacted by SourceMaterial. 

Responding to questions, a Lapa spokesman said that the company has never been “involved in any illegal actions or breach of sanctions”. Lapa crews ships are insured by “highly reputable global organizations” and the company monitors sanctions lists and international media closely to avoid potential breaches, he said. 

‘Hard enforcement’

Carefully targeted measures can help the EU tackle the involvement of European companies in manning Russia’s oil fleet, said Aris Vigants, Latvia’s special envoy for sanctions coordination. 

“Listing shadow fleet vessels under sanctions is the most effective way to restrict EU-based crewing agencies from providing their services,” he said. “Sanctions are working, and Russia’s economy is already feeling the impact.”

While previous sanctions have focused on the businesses and ships transporting Russian oil, the agencies crewing the ships could also soon find themselves in Brussels’ crosshairs, said Saiz of the Royal United Services Institute. 

“Then there should be hard enforcement coming their way,” he said, adding that individual officers on the tankers could also soon face sanctions. “There is now a discussion on sanctioning senior crew members and captains of shadow fleet vessels. This could be a significant step in holding individuals accountable.”

A draft European Commission proposal shared with member states on 28 January and seen by SourceMaterial would allow the bloc to sanction “persons, entities or bodies that own, control, manage or operate vessels involved in irregular and high risk shipping practices”, as well as anyone providing “material, technical or financial support” to ships carrying Russian oil. 

Ilchuk, who has since moved to another agency and is working on ships outside the shadow fleet, vows never again to use the agency that put him aboard the Orion, where, he says, he developed back injuries for which he was never compensated. Thousands of other sailors—including many fellow Ukrainians—are not so lucky. 

“People don’t go to sea because of romance or because they like the job,” he said. “It’s very dangerous, and anything can happen on board a ship.”

Some names have been changed.

This story was published as part of Shadow Fleet Secrets, an investigative project in partnership with Follow the Money, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Dialogue Earth in collaboration with 10 other newsrooms and 40 journalists from around the world. 

Headline image: Volkan Olmez on Unsplash