Few things provoke British politicians into fits of rage more than mention of Russia\u2019s “shadow fleet.” Yet last week\u2019s impotent tracking of Russian tankers in the English Channel illustrates that Britain doesn\u2019t have the means to do much about it.<\/p>\n
On 9 April, two Russian “shadow” oil tankers were escorted through the channel<\/a> by a Russian navy frigate armed with all manner of weapons, including anti-ship missiles. In response, the Royal Navy could only muster an auxiliary fuel tanker to follow it helplessly. The Daily Telegraph<\/a> reported on this heroic operation from the deck of a 40-foot fishing boat following in the tanker\u2019s wake. <\/p>\n A regular pattern is forming in which the Royal Navy deploys vessels that are overmatched by better armed Russian naval escorts<\/a>. <\/p>\n The inability of the Royal Navy to challenge Russian tankers has drawn howls of protest from opposition politicians, including former Prime Minister Boris Johnson<\/a>. The United Kingdom\u2019s attorney general has now ruled that U.K. forces cannot likely board<\/a> Russian vessels to seize them anyway, as this may be contrary to international law. Yet the policy message is clear. Even if Britain sent troops to board escorted Russian tankers, they might be fired upon with no effective military means to push back the Russian navy. The Royal Navy has been rendered unable to project force, even close to British shores.<\/p>\n A British frigate and helicopter seeing off Russian submarines apparently lingering over undersea cables<\/a> provided much-needed relief to the embattled Defense Secretary John Healey, who took to the 10 Downing Street press room to brief the media<\/a> on the operation. But that won\u2019t be enough to quell the growing sense of national embarrassment<\/a> and anger at the parlous state of the British armed forces. <\/p>\n An already much delayed Defence Investment Plan<\/a> is quite obviously being held back until after the upcoming May local elections, because it will likely list more projects that Britain can\u2019t afford or should shelve, rather than anything genuinely new and revolutionary; when published, I predict, it will be politically humiliating for the Labour government, which is suffering disastrous polling numbers<\/a>, with just one fifth of the population inclined to vote for them, a historic low for a governing party.<\/p>\n The case of HMS Dragon<\/a> has become illustrative of UK naval decay; the single air defense destroyer that Britain rushed out of maintenance and belatedly deployed to the Mediterranean to support defensive operations against Iran<\/a>, was bedeviled by technical difficulties and has been forced to dock again for repairs. <\/p>\n Russia<\/a>, meanwhile, has been emboldened. Having significantly increased the size of its fleet<\/a> in recent years, Moscow is now increasingly able to dominate the high seas off Europe<\/a> and hold British and European vessels at risk. In May of 2025, a Russian jet warned off an Estonian vessel<\/a> looking to interdict a Russian tanker. Following the seizure by U.S. forces of a Russian tanker<\/a> bound for Cuba<\/a> in January and the boarding by the French<\/a> of a shadow tanker on March 20, they have clearly decided \u201cenough is enough\u201d and are sending heavily armed Russian naval vessels to escort oil tankers. <\/p>\n Since the start of the war in Ukraine, western allies have sought to bear down on Russia\u2019s war economy by limiting the revenue it gains from oil and gas sales, which make up around two thirds of its exports. With some estimates suggesting 80% of Russian oil exported<\/a> is transported on ships, attacking the network of so-called “shadow tankers\u2019’\u2014 aging Russian tankers that sail under murky insurance and flag arrangements \u2014 might appear on the surface a sensible approach, or at least it did in 2022. But four years on, the endeavor has proved utterly meaningless. Now it appears self-defeating. <\/p>\n Let\u2019s be clear: the export of Russian oil has never been sanctioned in absolute terms. Rather, in December 2022, G7 countries imposed a price cap<\/a> of $60 per barrel of oil sold to minimize the revenue Russia generates from its exports. In July 2025, Europe further lowered the cap to $47.60, though the U.S. stuck at $60.<\/p>\n Despite their protestations, Europe has nevertheless continued to import billions of euros worth of Russian oil<\/a> throughout the war in Ukraine. Russia\u2019s biggest customers, China and India, have bought at discounted rates<\/a> below the level of the G7 price cap. Russia\u2019s third largest customer, Turkey<\/a>, has seen its imports of oil practically unchanged, walking a narrow tightrope on price restrictions.<\/p>\n The bottom line is that Russia\u2019s export revenue hasn\u2019t obviously suffered since 2022. In the first year of the Ukraine war<\/a>, Russia pulled in its biggest ever current account surplus<\/a> of $238 billion. Exports have remained above their historical average since that time. <\/p>\n The Iran war has now rendered the G7 price cap irrelevant. Global customers, faced with fuel rationing<\/a>, will pay any price to get hold of oil. It is therefore clear that Russia will gain another windfall from oil exports in 2026. Indeed, preliminary analysis suggests Russia will see its tax revenue from oil sales double<\/a> in April.<\/p>\n Since the war in Iran started, Russia has upped the ante by refusing to sell oil<\/a> to countries that back the G7 price cap. That policy guarantees that developing countries will get preferred status and won\u2019t want to enforce any price cap at a time of supply constraints. It also puts pressure on supplies to Europe and Japan in particular, who are struggling under the weight of soaring prices and tightened supply. <\/p>\n At a time when the U.S. has temporarily lifted<\/a> sanctions on Russian oil shipments, this is a further sign of the untethering of American and European policy towards Russia. The festering and as yet unresolved stand-off between Ukraine and Hungary<\/a> about the supply of oil via the damaged Druzhba pipeline might excite those Eurocrats who stridently believe we should continue to resist Russian energy supplies at all costs. The British hullabaloo about our inability to stop Russian tankers in the English Channel further proves our politicians have lost sight of our strategic objectives towards Russia, and whether our policies hurt Putin more than they hurt us.<\/p>\n Right now, it is crystal clear that our economies are suffering under the weight of energy shortages, as the coffers in the Kremlin are ringing, and Russia\u2019s navy is ruling Britannia\u2019s waves.<\/p>\n From Your Site Articles<\/p>\n Related Articles Around the Web<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Few things provoke British politicians into fits of rage more than mention of Russia\u2019s “shadow fleet.” Yet last…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12733,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[17,225,216,484,1556,5,6],"class_list":["post-12732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-uk","tag-eu","tag-oil","tag-royal-navy","tag-russia","tag-shadow-fleet","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116396135714649971","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12732\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}