How Russia Punched an $11 Billion Hole in the West’s Oil Sanctions

The failure of Western sanctions on Russian oil exports can be seen a short boat ride from the Greek coastal town of Gytheio, where two oil tankers with rusty hulls and a combined age of 57 years sit just meters apart from one another. The identity of the ships’ owners and insurer are elusive. They sail under the only flag in the world deemed by authorities to be “very high risk.” And the final destination of the profits from trading their Russian fuel is a mystery.

Even their movements are suspicious. Digital tracking systems showed the 26-year-old Turba floating over four miles away, as the 900-foot Simba emptied its fuel cargo into the smaller vessel, in the full view of a Bloomberg documentary team. On the same day as this ship-to-ship transfer took place in September, more than a dozen similar vessels — part of a vast shadow fleet — floated nearby, doing the same thing or getting ready to.