LUXEMBOURG — The European Commission will look into ways to deal with Russia’s shadow oil fleet as part of the next package of sanctions, Sweden’s Foreign Minister Tobias Billström said in an interview Monday.
The shadow fleet, which consists of an estimated 1,400 ships with opaque ownership, is “not only aiding Russia with circumventing the sanctions, but it’s also a clear environmental threat,” Billström told POLITICO and a number of other media outlets on the margins of the EU’s Foreign Affairs Council meeting in Luxembourg.
The fleet, he stressed, “is such a large problem … when it comes to the money that it fuels the war chest of Russia.”
However, analysts warn that drastic actions such as blocking ships from EU waters could be construed by Moscow as escalation.
