Baltic companies help Russia's shadow fleet circumvent sanctions – investigation
Photo: Vesselfinder

Companies from Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia are helping to maintain Russia's "shadow" fleet of old tankers that transport oil, circumventing Western sanctions. About it says in journalistic investigations by LRT, 15min, Eesti Ekspress, and Nekā personīga.

on March 8, 2025, in the Danish Strait near the port of Skagen, the Rina tanker refueled the Russian vessel Blue, which can carry up to 1 million barrels of oil and was heading to the port of Primorsk.

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The Blue tanker is part of Russia's "shadow" fleet. It is more than 20 years old, often disables the AIS tracking system, is officially owned by a little-known Turkish company, and flies the flags of Antigua and Barbuda.

Such operations are not isolated. According to the investigation, in just ten months, Rina and another tanker, Zircone, carried out 286 operations at sea, refueling 177 vessels, of which at least 159 called at Russian ports.

KSE analysts believe that at least 20 of these vessels have signs of belonging to the "shadow" fleet: they do not have international insurance and their owners are registered outside the jurisdiction of the countries that have imposed a "price ceiling" on Russian oil.

Formally, Rina and Zircone are owned by Dubai-based FB Trade, but journalists have found links to Fast Bunkering, a major fuel supplier from Klaipeda, Lithuania.

This company had been operating in Baltic ports for many years, particularly in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and controlled a network of subsidiaries under the Baltic Sea Bunkering brand.

It was founded by Estonian businessman Aleksei Chulets, who became one of the most influential entrepreneurs in maritime logistics in the 1990s. His business imported fuel, engaged in maritime transportation, and owned the port of Paldiski in Estonia.

Despite the official cessation of operations in 2023, the company's tankers continue to operate under other names.

The investigation shows that the vessels once owned by Fast Bunkering went through a series of sales – first to Latvian company Welton Enterprises SIA, and then to Dubai-based FB Trade. At the same time, the same people associated with Chulets and his partners remained in the ownership structure.

This is not the first time Fast Bunkering has been at the center of scandals. In 2022, it was accused of supplying oil products from Belarus to the EU with forged certificates. In 2023, Estonian investigators opened a case against a subsidiary of NT Bunkering, which is suspected of falsifying documents to pass off Russian fuel as Kazakh.

The journalists also found that the Lithuanian company Saurix Kuras, which is affiliated with Fast Bunkering, purchased more than €30 million worth of fuel from NT Bunkering in 2022. It is likely that some of this fuel was of Russian origin.

After the journalists' publications, Chulets said he was no longer involved in the business. However, the Rina and Zircone tankers continue to refuel ships carrying Russian oil, mainly in Danish waters and off the Swedish island of Gotland.

The new owner companies are registered in Dubai, where the actual beneficiaries are often impossible to identify. One of these companies, FB Trade, uses the same logo as Fast Bunkering, and its director is a former employee of the Latvian branch of this company.