Nicolas Cinquini

On August 4, 2025, the Russian State news agency, TASS, wrote

The UK’s secret services are planning to enlist NATO allies in a large-scale operation targeting the “shadow fleet,” which could lead to an environmental disaster in international waters, the press bureau of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) said in a statement obtained by TASS.

“British secret services are planning ecological disaster in international waters. The press bureau of the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation informs that, according to the information coming to the SVR, the British secret services are planning to involve NATO allies in a massive roundup for the ‘shadow fleet’,” the statement said.

According to London’s plan, the impetus for such a campaign should be provided by “a resonant incident involving one or more tankers.”

“The plan involves organizing a major act of sabotage the losses of which would allow the transportation of Russian oil to be declared a threat to all international shipping. This would untie Western countries’ hands in choosing methods of counteraction,” the document said.

Two scenarios and actors

According to the SVR, the British are working on “two potential casus belli.” “The first scenario implicates setting up an ‘unwanted’ tanker accident in one of bottlenecks of sea communications (for example, in straits). As it is believed in London, oil spills and fairway blocking would provide NATO countries with ‘sufficient’ grounds for establishing a precedent of ‘extraordinary’ vessel inspection under the guise of maritime safety and environmental regulations compliance,” the statement noted.

“The second one involves setting fire to a tanker at loading in a port of a state friendly to Russia. It is expected that the fire would cause significant damage to the port infrastructure and spread to other vessels, which would require an international investigation,” the SVR emphasized.

“London is going to entrust Ukrainian security forces with the implementation of both terrorist attacks. Their expectedly dirty work and inability to ‘cover up’ their tracks are considered by the British as a guarantee of impunity for themselves. The international investigation would hold either Russia or at worst Ukraine responsible for the accident, similar to the situation with the Nord Stream gas pipeline explosion,” the press bureau stressed.

Eying sanctions

The SVR pointed out that the timing of the UK attack is intended to be chosen so as to use the media effect from it to put pressure on the administration of US President Donald Trump.

“The aim is to force Washington, in defiance of its national interests, to impose the most severe secondary sanctions against Russian energy resources buyers, making them seen as ‘indirect culprits of the tragedy’,” the statement said.

“It seems like nostalgia for the lost dominance at sea and for authorized by the Crown pirate lawlessness have completely deprived the British Intelligence of the remnants of common sense. It’s high time for our British colleagues to understand that their increasingly bold attempts not only ‘to get back at’ their rivals, but also to cause damage to the global energy security and ecology are capable to make even their most loyal allies run out of patience,” the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service concluded

US social networking service X is integrating Grok, a funny artificial intelligence chatbot, which is regarding the Western mainstream media literature as gospel truth. Here is its definition of the so-called Russian shadow fleet

a group of over 600 aging vessels (average age nearing 30 years) used to evade Western sanctions on Russian oil exports, as detailed in a 2025 Windward.ai report analyzing shifts in trade routes to India, China, and Turkey

To assess the atmosphere, in the context of the proxy attrition war that the West is losing in Donbass and Ukraine, here is a piece on August 5 from the Financial Times, a British outlet

Donald Trump’s administration is considering additional sanctions on Russia’s “shadow fleet” of oil tankers if President Vladimir Putin does not agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine by Friday.

Blacklisting vessels in the fleet would mark the first time the US has imposed sanctions aimed at Moscow since Trump returned to the White House in January.

Russia has used a shadow fleet of largely ageing tankers to ship oil around the world in an attempt to evade western restrictions imposed in the wake of Moscow’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Proceeds from these crude exports have helped to finance the conflict.

The term “shadow fleet” refers to vessels whose ownership is hidden and which avoid using services from western companies. Enforcing sanctions against their owners is difficult, although measures targeting the ships themselves have recently proven effective.

Two people familiar with the White House’s deliberations said additional US sanctions on the shadow fleet were seen as an easy first step to impose costs on Russia. A third person close to the administration said it was considering a range of options, including sanctions on the fleet.

Joe Biden’s administration added 213 crude, chemical or product tankers to the sanctions list. Trump has held off imposing further sanctions on Russia in an effort to secure a negotiated settlement to end the war.

But he has grown increasingly frustrated with Putin’s refusal to agree to a ceasefire, and gave the Russian leader an ultimatum to change tack by Friday or face tougher sanctions.

Further US penalties on the fleet would bolster the EU’s recent steps against the fleet, said Kevin Book, managing director of research with ClearView Energy Partners. The bloc sanctioned more than 100 ships last month, bringing the total to 415.

Under the terms of the sanctions regime, western-linked companies are prohibited from buying seaborne oil priced above a G7 price cap fixed at $60 a barrel for crude. The shadow fleet has allowed Russia to ship oil above the cap — mainly to China and India.

In early 2024, Biden administration officials were surprised to realise that listing individual ships — rather than their owners or managers — proved to be effective, with buyers of Russian oil reluctant to deal with vessels that had been named. The EU and UK took up the practice as a result.

A Financial Times analysis of 115 crude tankers sanctioned by the US shows they became much less productive afterwards. Data from Kpler, a cargo analytics platform, reveals the vessels shipped a monthly average of 48mn barrels of Russian crude in the six months prior to their listing, but an average of only 13mn barrels in the six months afterwards.

Benjamin Hilgenstock, head of macroeconomic research and strategy at the Kyiv School of Economics Institute, said: “Aggressively going after the shadow fleet is a straightforward way of making things harder for Russia, and reinforce the message that the EU and UK have been sending.”

The Kremlin has disregarded a number of deadlines set by the US president to agree to a ceasefire and in recent weeks has significantly stepped up its attacks on Ukraine.

Trump has grown increasingly frustrated with his Russian counterpart and people close to the administration said Moscow would pay a price if it did not come to the negotiating table [That is a typical blatant lie. Russia is at the negotiation table and in order to implement a ceasefire, is demanding that the defeated Atlanticist troops withdraw first from the positions they are still occupying in Donetsk, Kherson, Lugansk and Zaporozhye regions].

He discussed possible measures against Moscow in a phone call with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tuesday. “We talked about sanctions against Russia,” said Ukraine’s leader. “Their economy continues to fall and that is why Moscow is so attentive to this prospect . . . This can change a lot.”

The US president on Monday also announced plans to increase tariffs on India, one of the leading buyers of Russian oil. “They don’t care how many people in Ukraine are being killed by the Russian war machine,” the president said in a post on social media.

Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff is expected to travel to Moscow this week, with Russian state newswire Tass reporting on Tuesday that he was due to arrive on Wednesday.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said: “We are always glad to see Mr Witkoff in Moscow. We view such contacts as important, substantive and very useful.”

Trump will probably decide on what potential costs to impose on Moscow when his envoy returns, said the person close to the administration.

“It depends on what Witkoff brings back,” the person said. “If Witkoff comes back empty-handed, with absolutely nothing, Trump is going to go ballistic.”

Anna Kelly, White House deputy press secretary, said: “The president has been clear that there will be biting sanctions if Putin does not agree to end the war. We will not get ahead of the president on specifics.”

Other options for the administration include more stringent enforcement of existing sanctions, or joining the EU’s new dynamic floating price cap on Russian oil which is set to take effect in early September, experts said.

Washington could also impose secondary sanctions on banks and oil refineries in other countries that facilitate trade in Russian oil, said Edward Fishman, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.

“There’s incredible latitude right now to actually impose hard-hitting oil sanctions on Russia,” he added.

A bill put forward by Senators Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal calling for tariffs of upwards of 500 per cent on countries that continue to buy Russian energy products has also gained widespread bipartisan support among lawmakers on capitol hill.

Trump has said he is “very strongly” considering supporting the bill, although analysts have questioned whether such steep tariffs could be sustainably enforced

Here is an excellent summary of the plot. The author is Irish journalist Chay Bowes

Related

August 5, 2025: Donald Trump readies fresh US sanctions against Russia’s shadow fleet – Financial Times

US president has threatened Vladimir Putin with punitive measures to force him to end war in Ukraine

August 4, 2025: UK secret services plotting maritime ecological disaster – TASS

“The plan involves organizing a major act of sabotage the losses of which would allow the transportation of Russian oil to be declared a threat to all international shipping,” the SVR said

June 26, 2025: In a plot twist worthy of John le Carré, we reveal the grandfather of the brilliant new head of MI6 was a Nazi spy chief – Daily Mail

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