How Russia’s shadow fleet is sailing around oil sanctions

Bjarne Caesar Skinnerup works as a maritime pilot in the straits of Denmark. That means he’s used to seeing oil tankers. But after the start of the war in Ukraine, the tankers started getting weird. They were flying flags he’d never seen before. They were old, very old, though many had taken on new names. Something was off. 


He’d stumbled on a shadow fleet of hundreds of tankers ferrying sanctioned oil out of Russia … with near impunity. 

Today on the show, how those ships are transforming the global oil market and fueling the war in Ukraine. And why this all might be a financial and environmental disaster waiting to happen.


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This episode was hosted by Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi and Daniel Ackerman. It was produced by Willa Rubin and edited by Marianne McCune. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez and engineered by Kwesi Lee and Cena Loffredo. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.

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