{"id":469490,"date":"2025-10-02T22:04:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-02T22:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/469490\/"},"modified":"2025-10-02T22:04:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-02T22:04:12","slug":"oil-tanker-captain-from-russias-shadow-fleet-faces-trial-in-france","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/469490\/","title":{"rendered":"Oil tanker captain from Russia’s shadow fleet faces trial in France"},"content":{"rendered":"

PARIS (AP) \u2014 The captain of an oil tanker that authorities in France have detained<\/a> off the country\u2019s Atlantic coast and which President Emmanuel Macron has linked to Russia will go on trial in February over the crew\u2019s alleged refusal to cooperate, a French prosecutor said Thursday.<\/p>\n

Macron has alleged that the tanker belongs to Russia\u2019s so-called shadow fleet<\/a> of aging tankers of uncertain ownership that are avoiding Western sanctions over Moscow\u2019s war in Ukraine<\/a>, and he didn\u2019t rule out that it could have been involved in drone flights over Denmark<\/a> as it was sailing last week off the coast of the Nordic country. <\/p>\n

Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced the tanker\u2019s detention as an act of piracy and alleged that Macron had initiated the move for domestic policy reasons. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no other way to deflect attention of the population, citizens of France from difficult internal problems that are hard to solve,\u201d Putin said at a forum of foreign policy experts in Russia\u2019s Black Sea resort of Sochi.<\/p>\n

Asked about whether the tanker could be linked to drones flights, Macron said that \u201cI\u2019m very cautious because our services and our justice are still working … I don\u2019t exclude it at all, but I cannot here attribute very clearly and establish a clear link between these two phenomenon.\u201d <\/p>\n

Putin emphasized that \u201cthere was no reason whatsoever for seizing the tanker in neutral waters,\u201d adding that \u201cthere wasn\u2019t and couldn\u2019t be\u201d any military cargo or drones. He also warned that such action could provoke confrontation.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s piracy, and how do you deal with pirates?\u201d Putin said. \u201cYou destroy them. It doesn\u2019t mean that tomorrow a war will erupt all across the global ocean, but certainly the risk of confrontation will seriously increase.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking at a European summit<\/a> in Copenhagen, Denmark, Macron said that the French navy faced \u201cinappropriate and extremely aggressive behavior\u201d towards the French frigate and helicopters that had been deployed to board the taker, which justified the opening of a judicial investigation. <\/p>\n

St\u00e9phane Kellenberger, prosecutor of the western port city of Brest, said that two Chinese crew members, the captain and the chief mate, who had been detained since Tuesday, were released from police custody. The chief mate has been released without charge.<\/p>\n

A preliminary investigation was opened into the crew\u2019s \u201crefusal to cooperate\u201d and \u201cfailure to justify the nationality of the vessel\u201d after the Atlantic Maritime Prefect alerted justice authorities Monday, Kellenberger said. The inquiry showed the captain couldn\u2019t be directly considered responsible for the second offense, he added.<\/p>\n

Kellenberger said that members of the French navy intervened and boarded the ship on Saturday off France\u2019s Atlantic coast in line with international law when there appeared to be a discrepancy between its apparent nationality and real nationality.<\/p>\n

An investigation led by the French navy concluded that the ship, coming from Russia and heading to India with a \u201clarge oil shipment,\u201d was flying no flag, he said.<\/p>\n

The captain was summoned for trial in Brest on Feb. 23. He faces up to one year in prison and a 150,000 euro ($176,000) fine.<\/p>\n

French military spokesman Col. Guillaume Vernet said that the ship was ordered to stay in place in a safe area.<\/p>\n

In comments earlier Thursday in Copenhagen, Macron praised the work of the French navy to \u201cidentify the presence of a shadow fleet.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou kill the business model by detaining even for days or weeks these vessels and forcing them to organize themselves differently,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Macron said \u201c30 to 40%\u201d of Russia\u2019s war effort is \u201cfinanced through the revenues of the shadow fleet.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt represents more than 30 billion euros. So it\u2019s extremely important to increase the pressure on this shadow fleet, because it will clearly reduce the capacity to finance this war effort for Russia,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Macron said the ship was \u201cexactly the same\u201d one which was detained by Estonia earlier this year for the same flag issue.<\/p>\n

In April, Estonian public broadcaster EE reported that the ship, then identified under the name \u201cKiwala,\u201d was stopped outside Tallinn Bay on way to the Russian port of Ust-Luga. At the time, Prime Minister Kristen Michal posted on social media that Estonia\u2019s navy had \u201cdetained a sanctioned vessel with no flag state\u201d and authorities had boarded the ship — without specifying.<\/p>\n

The ship, now known as \u201cPushpa\u201d or \u201cBoracay,\u201d left the Russian oil terminal in Primorsk near St. Petersburg on Sept. 20, and sailed off the coast of Denmark. It has stayed off the coast of the French western port of Saint-Nazaire since Sunday, according to the Marine Traffic monitoring website.<\/p>\n

The tanker, whose name has changed several times, was sailing under the flag of Benin and appears on a list of ships targeted by European Union sanctions against Russia.<\/p>\n

Asked by journalists about it, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that he had \u201cno information\u201d on the ship. He also said that many countries were carrying out \u201cprovocative actions\u201d against Russia.<\/p>\n

The shadow fleet is made up of used, aging tankers that were often bought by nontransparent entities with addresses from countries that haven\u2019t sanctioned Russia. Their role is to help Russia\u2019s oil exporters elude the price cap imposed by Ukraine\u2019s allies.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Angela Charlton in Paris, Katie Marie Davies in Manchester, England, Jamey Keaten in Geneva, and Lorne Cook in Copenhagen, Denmark, contributed to the story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PARIS (AP) \u2014 The captain of an oil tanker that authorities in France have detained off the country\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":469491,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[141731,21385,51,7667,2595,34,2000,299,36,4179,110178,7147,67043,7696,7136,51824,332,7661,156364,90351,63907,333,263],"class_list":{"0":"post-469490","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-angela-charlton","9":"tag-atlantic-ocean","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-dmitry-peskov","12":"tag-drones","13":"tag-emmanuel-macron","14":"tag-eu","15":"tag-europe","16":"tag-france","17":"tag-general-news","18":"tag-guillaume-vernet","19":"tag-indictments","20":"tag-katie-marie-davies","21":"tag-kristen-michal","22":"tag-legal-proceedings","23":"tag-lorne-cook","24":"tag-russia","25":"tag-russia-ukraine-war","26":"tag-stphane-kellenberger","27":"tag-transportation-and-shipping","28":"tag-trials","29":"tag-vladimir-putin","30":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115306841022338456","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=469490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469490\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/469491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=469490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=469490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=469490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}