The shadow fleet was bad — now the renegade fleet has arrived

Elisabeth Braw is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, the author of the award-winning “Goodbye Globalization” and a regular columnist for POLITICO.

The shadow fleet is a scourge. And ever since Western governments capped the price of Russian oil, it’s been growing incessantly, presenting the coastal states along its route with the omni-peril of accidents and oil spills.

All this is enabled by certain flag nations of convenience, which allow these shady ships to fly their flags. Now, though, a new category of ships is emerging — one that’s even shadier and harder to reign in: The renegade fleet, which flies no flag at all.

In the middle of the night on April 10, a mysterious ship approached the Gulf of Finland. Sailing from the Indian port of Sikka, it was en route to Russia’s Ust-Luga, a mere 32 kilometers from Narva, Estonia. This wasn’t at all unusual: Since the West imposed a $60-per-barrel price cap on Russian crude in December 2022, Estonian and Finnish authorities have grown accustomed to shady maritime visitors, with a skyrocketing number of so-called shadow vessels sailing in and out of Russia’s Baltic ports.

Usually, these shadow vessels fly flags of convenience, or the newly surging flags of extreme convenience (as I call them). The latter are the flags of countries like Gabon, Mongolia, the Cook Islands, the Comoro Islands and Guinea-Bissau, which have virtually no maritime expertise but have become a destination for ships that can’t get flagged anywhere else.

But the tanker the Estonians detained, the Kiwala, was different. It flew no flag at all.

Previously, the Kiwala had been registered in Saint Kitts and Nevis. Then, in May 2023, as the shadow fleet exploded in size, the owner changed its flag registration first to Mongolia, then to Gabon and eventually to Djibouti in late 2024. After that, it simply sailed without a flag.

This is a blatant violation of the maritime order. So, as the Kiwala approached Estonia’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), the country’s authorities kept a close eye on it, immediately instructing the vessel to enter territorial waters once it had entered the EEZ. And while shadow vessels usually take extreme pains to remain in EEZs, where coastal states have far fewer rights, the Kiwala remarkably complied.

Once in territorial waters, the ship was swiftly detained by authorities. “The ship had no flag state. A stateless vessel. Ships like this are actually not allowed to operate. Estonia exercised its right to detain the vessel for inspection,” Veiko Kommusaar, head of Estonia’s Police and Border Guard Board (PPA), told the media.

The detention turned out to be rather necessary, as Estonian authorities discovered the tanker had no fewer than 40 deficiencies. (Somehow its last inspection, completed in the Russian port of Novorossiysk in June 2024, had turned up no deficiencies at all.) Fifteen days later, with its most serious problems fixed, the Kiwala was allowed to depart, and Djibouti agreed to let it sail under its flag until May 7.

As of today, however, the Kiwala will likely return to its flag-less existence because it clearly didn’t hurt business: Since doing away with its flag registration last November, it’s been transporting crude back and forth between Russia and southeast Asia. When detained by the Estonians, the vessel was on its way to Ust-Luga to receive another load of Russian crude. Such is the state of maritime order today.

In a perverse sort of way, it’s good the Kiwala was sailing flagless: It means even flags of extreme convenience found the vessel too risky. Then again, the fact that this didn’t stop it from sailing at all suggests a troubling reality: So unconcerned are shadow vessel owners about international maritime rules that they’re willing to let ships violate the most fundamental commandment of global shipping.

Under normal circumstances, the Kiwala should have been detained in Ust-Luga, Sikka, or one of the other Russian or Indian ports where it regularly calls. But it wasn’t. Instead, its owner, its customers and all these ports tolerated its blatant violation of maritime rules. They were comfortable because on today’s oceans, rule-breaking is commonplace and on the rise — whether it’s the shadow fleet, the mysterious incidents involving undersea cables and pipelines, the Houthi attacks on Western-linked merchant vessels, China’s maritime harassment in the South China Sea or its seizure of reefs located in other countries’ waters.

As for the renegade fleet, it poses the same substantial risks as the shadow fleet — including the fundamental question of what happens in case of an accident. Ordinarily, the flag state plays a lead role dealing with accidents (and preventing them). But what happens when there’s no flag?

Law-abiding countries have few options when trying to tackle rule violators in their EEZs, and virtually none in international waters, but credit to Estonia for dealing with the Kiwala. Meanwhile, the rest of us can help by naming and shaming rule-breaking vessels, their owners and managers. We should especially keep an alert eye on other ships joining the renegade fleet.

For starters, the world should know about Tirad Shipping Inc. — the one-ship outfit in Mauritius that owned and managed the Kiwala when it entered Estonia’s waters — and the vessel’s new manager, the Shanghai-based Hong Ze Hu Shipmanagement Co. Their banks may want to take a closer look at them too because if they trade in dollars — as they most likely do —they could well be violating sanctions.

The international maritime order depends on countries and companies adhering to rules. Today, we’re seeing the broken windows theory play out on the high seas: lawlessness begetting more lawlessness. It was almost inevitable that the shadow fleet would be followed by the emerging renegade fleet. But it’s not too late to stop it in its maritime tracks.