For several years, the European Union has sought to curtail Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet,” a network of tankers that transports Russian oil while skirting Western sanctions and sustaining Moscow’s war effort. Despite repeated measures from Brussels, the fleet has continued to grow, raising questions over the effectiveness of EU policy and about who ultimately benefits from this grey zone of maritime trade.
Eight months ago, an international investigative collaboration that included Greek reporting teams revealed striking evidence: dozens of vessels once owned by European—and primarily Greek—shipping companies now operate within Russia’s shadow fleet. The findings not only drew global attention but also reached the European Parliament, which shortlisted the project for the 2025 Daphne Caruana Galizia Prize for Journalism.
The investigation, titled The Shadow Fleet Secrets and published in Greece as How Greek Ships Ended Up in Russia’s Shadow Fleet, was coordinated by the Dutch outlet Follow the Money and involved 16 European media organizations, including NRK in Norway, De Tijd in Belgium, The Times in the UK, NDR, WDR and Süddeutsche Zeitung in Germany, Danwatch in Denmark, IrpiMedia in Italy, the OCCRP, as well as SourceMaterial and Dialogue Earth. For Greece, the reporters Eliza Triantafyllou of Inside Story and Danae Maragoudaki of Solomon played a key role.
A central part of the work involved data analysis. Solomon and Inside Story combined information from the Kyiv School of Economics with Lloyd’s List databases to create, for the first time, a registry of 100 ships that had previously been Greek-owned and were now operating in Russia’s shadow fleet. Each vessel was examined in detail: its chain of resale, the new owners, and the shipping routes where it is currently active.
The results were alarming. Between the Russian invasion in February 2022 and the introduction of the oil price cap in December that year, 23 Greek-owned vessels were sold into the shadow fleet, generating about $575 million for their sellers. In 2023, after the cap but before stricter tanker-sale rules came into force, sales surged dramatically. Sixty-three Greek-owned tankers changed hands, later appearing in the shadow fleet, with combined earnings for their former owners reaching nearly $1.9 billion. In 2024, at least 14 former Greek vessels worth about $480 million were found transporting Russian oil without Western insurance or registries.
The investigation also revealed common tactics used to conceal operations: frequent flag and name changes, opaque ownership structures and ship-to-ship transfers that make tracking difficult. The broader picture showed that sanctions may limit Russia’s direct access to Western markets, but they have not prevented the expansion of a shadow fleet that allows Moscow to continue exporting oil. Crucially, the findings suggested that parts of Europe’s shipping industry—and particularly the Greek sector—have profited handsomely from this trade.
The revelations have already had institutional consequences. On September 26, 2025, Lithuanian MEP Petras Auštrevičius of Renew Europe submitted a written question to the European Commission citing The Shadow Fleet Secrets. He accused European, and especially Greek, shipping companies of continuing to supply vessels to the shadow fleet and of transporting Russian oil despite sanctions. His question named companies including Okeanis Eco Tankers and Kyklades Maritime, owned by the Alafouzos family, as well as shipowner George Economou’s TMS Tankers and Tsakos Energy Navigation, all of which, according to media reports, sold vessels that later ended up in the shadow trade.
Auštrevičius also noted that Ukraine had already placed Greek shipowners on its list of “International Sponsors of War” in 2023. Yet despite multiple sanctions packages since then, the EU has so far restricted its measures to blacklisting ships, stopping short of imposing individual sanctions on European shipowners.
