British forces board Russian shadow fleet tanker near UK

Royal Marine Commandos and law enforcement officers have boarded a sanctioned Russian shadow fleet oil tanker in the English Channel, in what the government has called the first UK-led operation of its kind, the Ministry of Defence has said.

The vessel, named as the SMYRTOS, was boarded in the early hours of Sunday morning by Royal Marine Commandos and specially trained officers from the National Crime Agency, in an operation that lasted six hours. The boarding was supported by aircraft from the Maritime Air Group, including Chinooks, Merlin Mk4 and Wildcat helicopters, an RAF P-8 Poseidon, and the warships HMS Sutherland and HMS Ledbury.

The ship will now be moved provisionally to an anchorage off the south coast of England, where it will be monitored for any environmental or safety concerns.

The Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, said the operation delivered “yet another blow to Russia” and reminded those fuelling Putin’s war in Ukraine that “they cannot hide”. He paid tribute to the armed forces and law enforcement officers who, he said, keep the country safe “24 hours a day, 365 days a year”.

The Defence Secretary Dan Jarvis said operations of the kind required “skill, professionalism and courage”, and that the interdiction “delivers a blow to Putin’s illegal war”, with Russia relying on its shadow fleet to fund the conflict in Ukraine.

The Prime Minister agreed in March that British armed forces and law enforcement officers could board shadow fleet vessels in accordance with international law, and the Ministry of Defence said the enforcement action in UK territorial waters was carried out in line with both domestic and international law. The operation was conducted in close coordination with France, the department said, and builds on recent UK support for allied interdictions, which has included RAF and Royal Navy capabilities backing US and French operations.

The shadow fleet is the term used for the large number of ageing, often opaquely owned and inadequately insured tankers that Russia uses to move its oil in defiance of Western sanctions and the price cap imposed by the G7. The Ministry of Defence says the fleet of more than 700 vessels carries around 75 per cent of Russia’s sanctioned oil, generating a war fund that pays for the missiles and drones used against Ukraine, and that over 72 per cent of the tankers involved are more than fifteen years old, with more than fifty incidents involving the fleet recorded.

The legal basis for the boarding rests on the international law of the sea, with the Ministry of Defence pointing to Article 110 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which permits a warship to exercise a right of visit to verify a vessel’s flag where there are reasonable grounds to suspect it is without nationality. Where a ship is determined to be stateless, the United Kingdom can then exercise powers under its own legislation, including the ship-sanctions provisions in the Russia sanctions regulations and maritime enforcement powers under the Policing and Crime Act.

The United Kingdom has sanctioned almost 600 Russian shadow fleet vessels to date, and the government says the measures are biting, with Russia’s oil revenues down 27 per cent compared with October 2024, the lowest since the start of the war, and ships sanctioned by the UK having carried $1.6 billion less in Russian oil in the first quarter of last year than a year earlier. Today’s action, the Ministry of Defence said, sends a clear message that the United Kingdom will use the full range of legal tools available to enforce sanctions and protect its security.