An oil tanker suspected of belonging to Russia’s sanctions-evading “shadow fleet” has been released by France after its owner paid a multimillion-euro penalty, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said Tuesday.
The vessel, named the Grinch, was intercepted by French authorities in the Mediterranean in January and redirected to Marseille.
According to officials, it had departed from Murmansk in northern Russia and was sailing under a Comoros flag.
“Circumventing European sanctions comes at a price. Russia will no longer be able to finance its war with impunity through a ghost fleet off our coasts,” Barrot wrote in a post on X.
“The tanker Grinch will leave French waters after shelling out several million euros and three weeks of costly immobilisation at Fos-sur-Mer. Let’s keep it up,” he added.
In a joint statement, the Marseille prosecutor’s office and regional maritime authorities said the vessel’s owning company had been penalized under a guilty plea procedure.
“As part of a guilty plea procedure, the company that owns the vessel was sentenced by the Marseille judicial court to a financial penalty of confiscation,” the statement said.
Authorities did not disclose the exact amount paid.
Western officials estimate that Russia operates a “shadow fleet” of more than 400 aging tankers and cargo ships to skirt sanctions imposed over its war in Ukraine.
The vessels are often owned through opaque corporate structures registered in countries that have not joined Western sanctions and sail under so-called flags of convenience.
Fourteen European countries have come to an agreement to step up action against the shadow fleet, saying they will obstruct tankers that break sanctions or violate international maritime rules.
Also on Tuesday, Nikolai Patrushev, a senior Kremlin aide and hardliner, warned that Moscow could deploy naval forces to prevent European countries from seizing Russian ships and could retaliate against European maritime traffic if its vessels are detained.
“If we don’t give them a tough rebuff, then soon the British, French and even the Balts [Baltic nations] will become arrogant to such an extent that they will try to block our country’s access to the seas at least in the Atlantic basin,” Patrushev told the Russian media outlet Argumenty i Fakty.
“In the main maritime areas, including regions far from Russia, substantial forces must be permanently deployed - forces capable of cooling the ardor of Western pirates,” he said.
Patrushev also alleged that NATO was considering a blockade of Kaliningrad, Russia’s Baltic Sea exclave.
“Any attempt at a naval blockade of our country is completely illegal from the standpoint of international law, and the concept of a ‘shadow fleet’, which EU representatives brandish at every turn, is a legal fiction,” he said.
“By implementing their naval blockade plans, the Europeans are deliberately pursuing a scenario of military escalation, testing the limits of our patience and provoking active retaliatory measures,” Patrushev underlined.
“If a peaceful resolution to this situation fails, the blockade will be broken and eliminated by the navy.”