No
Action
Talk
Only
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B is for the bombs you drop
I is for the invasion you stop
R is for your leader, Robert the Hun
D is for drones that have seen and have stung
O is for nothing, which is what you get paid
F is for the 414th Brigade
M is for Magyar, a word for Hungarian
A is for all things good and Ukrainian
G is general global indifference
Y is it so? I prefer not to inference
A is also for starting an attack
R you ready drone? You’re not coming back
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Russian losses per 04/02/26 reported by the Ukrainian General Staff
+780 men
+4 tanks
+7 ACVs
+60 artillery
+1 MLRS
+1 AD system
+1355 (!) UAVs
+40 cruise missiles
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The promise that EU will stand firm “alongside you”. .. Should be “behind you”.
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Olga Skabeeva clashes with Alexei Naumov about Iran
TLDR: “Studio imported, fake-contradictory, fake-balance, opposite opinion talking point foil” Alexei Naumov actually starts to make some logical points about the new realities of the multi-polar world project but it causes friction with host Skageeva. In the end Skageeva acknowledges the validity of Naumov’s general points yet does not welcome their logical conclusion, saying “this is not the way to talk about it in this context”.
They were so close to getting it…
Russian Council on International Affairs (RIAC)
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Naumov was sounding like he agreed with Stephen Miller. Or did I get this wrong?
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Largely, yes.
In Naumov’s mind, Iran should put up or shutup. If I read this correctly.
Russia agrees with this ‘Peace through strength’, doctrine. Or at least some do. Others realise, they are not that strong.
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Yep. Putin’s russia not only agrees with it, they are (one of) the main drivers of it. But they never took the time to think about that, because, comforted in their own delusions of grandeur, busy grinding their small neighbour under their own boot heel, they couldn’t countenance the gradual eventuality of it in this brave new world they created…Won’t be too pretty for them if/when they are ground under the boot heel of a more powerful adversary, would it?
Farkin’ Oops…
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That’s a shame.
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Fair to say I’d absolutely ■■■■ my pants if I saw that guy driving toward me.
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The Economist.
Ghostbusted
The West and Ukraine are capsizing Russia’s shadow fleet
And sinking its oil revenues in the process
Photograph: Reuters
Jan 27th 2026|7 min read
ON JANUARY 22ND the Grinch was sailing in international waters off Spain when two helicopters from the French navy hovered overhead. Soldiers burst into the cabin, searched the ship and rerouted her to a port near Marseille, where she is now moored under guard. The Grinch was under sanctions, flying a false Comorian flag and carrying 730,000 barrels of Russian oil. It is one of at least five slippery vessels to land in Western nets this month.
Chart: The Economist
First assembled by Iran in the 2010s, the loose fleet that exclusively ships oil under Western embargo has more than doubled in size since mid-2022 (see chart 1). It now numbers nearly 700 mostly older vessels, controlled through shell companies that mask their beneficial owner (rising to as many as 1,500 if you count those that occasionally run shifty crude). Many routinely spoof their locations, change names and colours, and covertly transfer their load to others in poorly regulated waters.
Despite waves of sanctions, the tankers have chugged along, allowing Iran and Russia, now the biggest user, to ship crude to China and India. In early 2025 they assisted Venezuela’s regime when Donald Trump withdrew a licence (since reissued) allowing the country to export some oil. In December they carried nearly 5m embargoed barrels per day, equivalent to 11% of global seaborne flows, according to Kpler, a data firm. Michelle Bockmann of Windward, a maritime-intelligence firm, reckons one in five of the world’s internationally trading tankers is “dark”.
Bring out the search light
Now this flotilla faces a perfect storm. Western countries are blacklisting ships en masse. America has imposed “secondary” penalties on Iran and Russia’s oil firms, deterring buyers. Flag registries are being cleaned up and dodgy ships risk being blocked from vital waterways, paralysing the system. Dark vessels have become vulnerable to Ukrainian attacks and, as the Grinch discovered, Western military raids. From the Baltic to the Caribbean, the treasure ships of odious regimes are being hunted. Can they be capsized for good?
Map: The Economist
Start with the sanctions. After failing to impede the trade’s middlemen, who hide behind shell companies that can be easily replaced, Western countries are targeting the tankers themselves. Altogether 623 vessels were added to a sanctions list for the first time in 2025, compared with 225 in 2024. About 40% of the ships that ferried Russian oil last year are now blacklisted by at least one government; for Iran the share is two-thirds.
Loopholes are closing, which will drag more tankers into the net. In October America imposed secondary penalties on Russia’s two largest oil firms. Add older measures and tankers carrying 80% of the barrels Russia pumps are exposed to potential sanctions. This means they cannot attain certification, buy insurance or bank with compliant institutions. Mr Trump has also announced a “secondary tariff” on countries that trade with Iran. On January 21st the EU banned all imports of products made from Russian oil, stopping flows into the bloc of products from Turkey, India and China that had been refined from Russian crude. Its next sanctions package, due in February, may bar the EU’s insurers from serving tankers carrying Russian oil (they may currently do so provided the fuel is sold below a certain price).
Chart: The Economist
Blacklisted vessels must now travel longer routes to avoid inspections and transfer their load more often to obscure the cargo’s origin. With buyers and ports fearful of falling foul of sanctions, the volume of Russian and Iranian oil loitering at sea—much of it off the Chinese coast—is hitting records (see chart 2). Kpler estimates that tankers become 30% less productive (measured in tonne-miles, a freight-industry benchmark) in the six months after being added to a European blacklist and 70% less when added to an American one. Less productive tankers mean more of them are needed. Limited supply is pushing up prices. A list of recent transactions gathered by C4ADS, a research group, and reviewed by The Economist shows ageing dark ships fetching higher prices when resold—the reverse of what normally happens.
The sanctions’ effects are compounded by Western efforts to render blacklisted tankers flagless. International maritime law requires ships to be registered in a country. Civilian vessels need a flag to legally enter ports and sail through foreign seas; those suspected of lacking a valid banner can be boarded by any navy in its territorial waters or international ones.
Many shadow tankers used to be flagged in permissive harbours such as Panama and Liberia. About a year ago, however, under pressure from America and Britain, these started delisting embargoed ships in earnest. The vessels initially hopped to lower-quality flags like the Comoros—until those, too, began kicking them out. Windward calculates that nearly 700 ships changed flags between two and six times in 2025.
Flags of confidence men
The dark vessels then turned to fraudsters offering fake flag certificates (see chart 3). Many of the impersonated maritime authorities, such as Guyana’s and St Maarten’s, do not have vessel registries open to foreigners. Such falsely flagged ships are legally stateless.
Chart: The Economist
Since December America has used statelessness as justification for seizing at least seven tankers, one of which it chased all the way from the Caribbean to waters near Iceland. Britain, whose Royal Air Force assisted in that raid, later said that it had found a similar legal basis to detain shadow vessels, a dozen of which sail through the strait of Dover every day. On January 10th Germany blocked a tanker suspected of forged registration and headed to a Black Sea terminal from entering its Baltic waters—an EU first.
Ukraine is taking more brazen military action. Since late November it has attacked at least nine tankers, seven of them shadow-fleet vessels, using mines as well as naval and aerial drones. Some of these strikes occurred far from its shores, including one in the Mediterranean. Ambushed tankers usually suffer critical damage. “Kyiv believes the tactic is working,” observes Charlie Edwards of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a think-tank. Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s new defence minister, wants more drones to hit Russia beyond Ukraine’s borders.
Chart: The Economist
Drone strikes raise costs for other ships, too. In the past month war-risk insurance premiums in the Russian Black Sea have jumped to 1% of the value of a tanker’s hull and machinery. A year ago they were 0.4%. Rates in high-risk but conflict-free waters seldom exceed 0.05%. Data compiled by Argus Media, a price-reporting agency, show that the cost of ferrying barrels from the Black Sea to India or China has surged in recent weeks (see chart 4). This has helped depress the price of a barrel of Urals crude, Russia’s main grade, to $27 below that of Brent, the international benchmark (see chart 5)—the biggest discount since April 2023.
The impact of this on the oil market has been muted because the world is awash with crude. If oversupply pushes the price of Brent down further in the coming quarters, this could knock that of Urals below $30 a barrel, less than half its average level in 2024. Russia’s oil-and-gas revenues could soon fall below $10bn a month, reckons Jacob Nell, formerly an economist at the Russian finance ministry. That would clobber the country’s finances, strained as they are by its warmongering in Ukraine.
Chart: The Economist
To safeguard its route to market, Russia is bringing more of the shadow fleet under its direct control. Since mid-December 32 tankers under sanctions have appeared on its maritime registry. Given that Russia’s registry is “closed”—ie, typically accepts only Russian-owned vessels—many shadow tankers may end up in Russian hands. The newly formed Russian company that owns the Marinera, a tanker seized earlier this month, has acquired at least one more ship since December. The share of tankers that serve only Russia is on the rise.
A Russian flag will make the shadow fleet less shadowy—and more strategic. The Kremlin may dispatch submarines and fighter jets to protect some ships. This will make it harder for Western forces to intervene. But Russian-flagged vessels would be all but uninsurable and military escort does not come cheap. That will further drain the Kremlin’s coffers. With luck, mounting costs will give Russia that sinking feeling. ■
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