EXPLAINER: Anand vows to disrupt the shadow fleet, and Ottawa has sanctioned no ship since June

A bridge off Odesa

Overnight, September 22 to 23

A Russian drone struck a cargo ship off Odesa oblast overnight from September 22 to 23. Its Ukrainian captain died, according to the Ukrainian Sea Ports Authority.

The ship flew the flag of Antigua and Barbuda. It had just left a Ukrainian port. Ukraine’s Sea Guard evacuated 15 sailors through the smoke, under the threat of another strike.

Its name, its cargo, its destination: none of it has been made public.

On a cargo ship, the bridge is the highest deck. Windows on three sides. The dull throb of the engines underfoot. It is where you watch the sea coming.

Not the drone.

Six days earlier

Six days before, another Russian drone had struck a Tanzanian-flagged ship bound for a Ukrainian port. Its captain died too. Three sailors were wounded, Euromaidan Press reported on September 25.

Two bridges. Two captains. Six days.

Two empty cabins. Two names the official statements never gave.

Now widen the frame. About 90% of Ukraine’s farm exports travel these sea routes, according to Kyiv.

An empty bridge is a route someone wants closed.

One promise, Calgary to New York

At the UN podium, Saturday

On Saturday, from the podium of the United Nations General Assembly, Anita Anand promised the sea.

Canada and Ukraine, the foreign minister said, will work together toward safe navigation in the Black Sea. By strengthening Ukrainian port infrastructure. By disrupting and deterring the illegal activities of Russia’s shadow fleet.

Three verbs. Support navigation. Strengthen the ports. Disrupt the fleet.

Only the third can be counted in ships.

The same speech announced the Toronto conference and named Iran. Here, only the sea concerns us.

Calgary, September 10

We had read that sentence before. On September 10, in Calgary, Mark Carney and Volodymyr Zelensky signed a declaration of partnership meant to last a hundred years. The joint declaration already promised to disrupt and deter the shadow fleet.

Canada would also maintain and tighten economic pressure on Russia, the same declaration promised. Tighten. At sea, nothing has moved since.

Sixteen days. The same promise. No new tool in between.

Same sentence. Same verb. Same blur about the means.

A repeated promise is not a lie. It is a commitment still waiting for its first proof.

Two speeches, one sentence, zero new tools.

Schedule 1.1 of the Russia regulations

The rule, in plain words

Here is how Canada hits a ship. It lists it in Schedule 1.1 of the Special Economic Measures (Russia) Regulations.

Since 2022, a Russia-linked ship can neither dock in Canada nor pass through its waters. Since June 2025, any service to a listed ship has been banned.

In plain terms: no Canadian insures it, repairs it or supplies it.

Six waves, then nothing

Ottawa listed 109 ships on February 21, 2025. Ottawa listed 201 ships on June 13, 2025. Ottawa listed 100 ships on November 6, 2025. Ottawa listed 100 ships on February 19, 2026. Ottawa listed 100 ships on March 25, 2026. Ottawa listed 121 ships on June 12, 2026.

In all, 731 ships.

Six times, the list grew. Since June, it has been asleep.

Then nothing more. On August 6, one entity. In September, eight people tied to the fate of Ukrainian children. Not one ship.

Why does the last wave date from June 12?

From June 12 to September 28: 108 days without a single hull added.

The list stopped in June. The fleet did not.

Fifty-two percent on listed hulls

The August count

The Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, CREA, published its analysis of August in September. One number is enough.

In August, 52% of the Russian oil exported by sea travelled on shadow fleet tankers that were already sanctioned. For crude alone: 61%.

Already sanctioned. Carrying 52% of the oil.

Fifty-two. More than one barrel in two.

Read it again. These are not unknown ships. They are listed ships, listed by Ottawa or by its allies, sailing anyway.

The crews sailing out of Odesa

I stand with the crews who sail out of Odesa. Against the strikes Moscow claims on their ships. And against a Canadian promise that no ship listing has followed since June 12.

Because in August, half of Russia’s seaborne oil moved on sanctioned hulls. A list that no longer moves disrupts nothing.

Listing a ship does not stop it. Not listing emboldens it.

Tires, nets and water tanks

The Bosphorus in August

Now look at the hulls up close.

On August 11, the Caruzo, a Sierra Leone-flagged tanker, transited the Bosphorus with water tanks hung around its stern, Reuters reports. On August 27, the Khrizopraz, a Russian-flagged tanker, went through with tires slung along its hull.

Tires. Against drones.

The water tanks are meant to absorb an impact and protect the engine room, the agency explains. Rubber and water against an explosive charge.

Other tankers carry nets stretched above their superstructures. These measures stop small drones, not large military craft, warns Corey Ranslem of the firm Dryad Global.

False flags, old hulls

At the end of August, 45 shadow fleet ships were sailing under a false flag, according to CREA.

Of the 150 shadow tankers that exported Russian oil in August, 73 were at least twenty years old.

That is the mechanism. An old ship, a borrowed flag, an opaque insurer. And now tires.

The mechanism sometimes breaks. Cameroon, whose registry had been hijacked by a fraudulent body, struck 26 of these ships in July and 11 in August, according to CREA. One state acted. The fleet lost flags.

The shadow fleet adapts to what really threatens it. It hangs nothing on its hull to guard against a regulatory schedule.

Tires against drones. Never against a list.

The Russian flag as a shield

The June draft decree

Across the water, there is a decision, and it has a date.

In June 2026, according to Chatham House, Moscow drafted a presidential decree to grant the Russian flag to more shadow fleet ships. Under the Russian flag, a tanker comes under state protection.

American and European officials acknowledge it, the institute writes: seizing a Russian-flagged ship is far riskier.

In May, Estonia tried to hold the sanctioned tanker Jaguar in the Baltic. Moscow sent a Su-35 fighter into NATO airspace.

What Moscow claims

In August, Vladimir Putin again threatened direct retaliation, and branded the European seizures acts of piracy.

On September 27, the Russian Defence Ministry claimed, according to Reuters, a strike on a cargo ship it said was carrying military and dual-use goods to Odesa. Then a second cargo ship, the same day. Reuters could not verify either claim.

India and Russia also signed a five-year military agreement this year that allows up to five warships from each country to deploy to the other, Chatham House adds.

Seizing risks escalation. Seizing nothing lets them through.

The Kremlin wants to wrap its tankers in its flag. It strikes other people’s freighters.

A Russian flag for its tankers, drones for Odesa’s freighters.

731 ships, and then what

What the list did not do

Now I have to write against my own camp. I defend sanctions. They leak.

Tankers already under sanctions carried 52% of Russia’s seaborne oil in August. The price cap never imposed a lasting constraint on Russian crude revenues, CREA concludes.

Worse for my case: the Hormuz crisis swelled Russia’s seaborne export revenues by about €31 billion in six months, according to the same centre.

A fleet turned parallel system

Chatham House goes further. Before the war, there were about 200 dark ships. Today the estimate is more than 1,300, at least one tanker in five worldwide.

Sanctions, the institute writes, are unintentionally turning this fleet into a parallel commercial system, with its own insurers, its own financing and its own military protection.

In the first half of the year, nine ships suspected of belonging to this fleet were seized in Europe, four of them by France, according to the institute. Nine. Out of more than 1,300.

All of that is true. And yet a leaking list gets patched. It does not get shelved in June.

Patch a list, yes. Shelve it in June, no.

Ten sailors in July

What a crossing costs

Let us slow down. Here, the numbers have hands.

There was June: one sailor dead, five wounded, on two ships hit by Russian drones.

There was July: a Russian strike on a Turkish-owned bulk carrier off Odesa. Ten crew members dead.

There was the Tanzanian ship in September, and its captain. There was the Antigua and Barbuda freighter, and its captain.

Dozens of sailors have died in 2026 in attacks on civilian shipping, according to Euromaidan Press.

The empty bridges

A sailor does not sign joint declarations. He signs a contract for a few months. He calls home when the signal holds. He counts the days until relief.

At home, someone counts the same days, until…

Ten crew members. One ship. July.

Ten bunks. Ten bags to send home.

And across the water, other crews pay too. When a shadow ship is detained or breaks down, its operators often vanish behind their shell companies, Chatham House notes. The sailors stay aboard, without pay, without food, without recourse.

Floating prisons, the institute calls them.

Up on the bridge, no one replaces a captain.

Kyiv strikes too

Ankara’s complaint

Here is the answer Moscow would sign, and Ankara might countersign.

Since July, Kyiv has stepped up its attacks on the ships and infrastructure that serve Russian oil and grain exports, Reuters reports. In late August, Turkey summoned the Ukrainian ambassador after attacks on two ships near the Russian port of Tuapse.

On September 2, Recep Tayyip Erdogan said those attacks had revived global grain shortages, in Africa first. On the very day of the latest strike off Odesa, the European Union called for a moratorium on strikes against Black Sea shipping.

So the danger at sea would run in two directions. It is the strongest argument against this piece.

The order of events

And yet the order matters. Kyiv stepped up its attacks in July, Reuters writes, when Russia stepped up its strikes on Odesa, Chornomorsk and Pivdennyi, Ukraine’s three big grain ports.

The July 2022 deal, reached with Ankara’s help, allowed nearly 33 million tonnes of Ukrainian grain to be exported across the Black Sea. Moscow walked out in 2023.

Turkey has proposed a new plan to restore safe passage for grain. On September 2, Moscow replied that it saw no reason to revive the deal.

Turkish ships have repeatedly been targeted by drones in the Black Sea, Reuters recalls. Ankara has every right to protest. I do not brush its complaint aside. I note who refused the corridor.

A corridor Moscow refused cannot be pinned on Kyiv.

Nine days without a cargo

Novorossiysk, mid-August

So who is really disrupting the shadow fleet?

In mid-August, Ukrainian drones disrupted the Sheskharis terminal in Novorossiysk, according to CREA. Crude loadings there fell 58% in a month. They stopped for 9 days straight, the longest interruption since the start of the full-scale invasion.

The port of Tuapse loaded no oil product cargo for the third month running. Across Russian ports, August loadings of oil products were less than half those of August 2025.

Drones and lists

In August, Russia’s fossil fuel export revenues fell 8% in a month, to €604 million a day, again according to CREA.

Nine days of empty quay. No Canadian schedule ever did that.

I am not telling Canada to launch drones. I am saying the disruption already exists, and it is Ukrainian.

But a terminal gets repaired. A tanker puts back to sea. What the drone interrupts, the sanction should keep from resuming.

The drone stops a quay. The list should stop the hull.

Dark vessels, watched elsewhere

A tool already on offer

Canada has a tool. The minister named it in the same Saturday speech, when she spoke of the Indo-Pacific: Canada’s dark vessel detection program, offered to partners.

A dark vessel is a ship that switches off its transponder to vanish from the screens. That is exactly the shadow fleet’s method, Chatham House points out.

Turn it toward the Black Sea

Canada knows how to detect. Canada knows how to list. Canada knows how to ban services.

Detect. List. Ban. Three verbs Canada uses one at a time, never together.

What is missing is the link between the three.

Why the Indo-Pacific, and not the Black Sea?

Sanctioning countries must align their ship lists and the way they enforce them, CREA recommends. Coastal states must inspect and detain ships that have no right of passage.

The lamp exists. It shines elsewhere.

Offering detection to the Indo-Pacific while staying silent about it in the Black Sea means leaving the lamp in the drawer.

Offered elsewhere, a radar does not light up Odesa.

The Black Sea as a war risk

The London market

Who pays for what the list does not do?

First, the crews. Then the shipowners: the London marine insurance market has extended its high-risk zone to the entire Black Sea, Euromaidan Press reports. In plain terms, every crossing there becomes a war risk to insure.

Then Ukraine. It could lose $1.5 billion to $3 billion in export revenue if the attacks continue, according to a Foreign Policy estimate cited by the same outlet.

Taxpayers on the coast

And one day, maybe, all of us. If a poorly insured tanker causes an oil spill, cleanup and compensation could cost taxpayers in coastal countries more than €1 billion, CREA estimates.

Seventy-three tankers aged twenty or older. Opaque insurers. A list at a standstill.

The crews pay in lives. The shipowners in premiums. Kyiv in lost revenue.

The coasts signed nothing. They would pay anyway.

This is not a prediction. It is a risk CREA already puts a number on.

What the list spares Moscow, the coasts will pay for.

A list that no longer moves

Ottawa, September 28

Even today, Canada’s page of sanctions against Russia stops, for ships, at June 12.

A list can be updated in a day. The ship list has been waiting for more than three months.

Three months. Zero hulls. Two captains.

And yet the minister promised to disrupt. The prime minister promised it before her. Tankers cross the Bosphorus with tires against drones, and nothing against Ottawa.

I admit it: I would never have looked at that schedule without the two captains. That may be the real problem.

The next freighter out

Will Ottawa list a single ship before this fleet sails through the winter?

A number of ships listed, with a date. A number of ships detected, then detained.

Tomorrow, another freighter will leave Odesa. Someone will climb to the bridge.

Already sanctioned, already at sea: Ottawa promises, the fleet sails on.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• Global Affairs Canada — Anita Anand’s address to the UN, Black Sea and shadow fleet, September 26, 2026
• Global Affairs Canada — Canadian sanctions related to Russia, listed ships, page updated September 28, 2026
• Reuters — makeshift ship defences and Moscow’s refusal of the grain deal, September 2, 2026

Secondary Sources:

• Euromaidan Press — two captains dead in six days in the Black Sea, September 25, 2026
• CREA — August analysis of Russian fossil fuel exports and the shadow fleet, September 2026
• Chatham House — the shadow fleet as a parallel system, September 14, 2026