2025-08-12
10 分钟Welcome to The World in 10.
In an increasingly uncertain world, this is The Times' daily podcast dedicated to global security.
Today with me, Alex Dibble and James Kitchen.
On Christmas morning last year,
a foreign-flagged oil tanker was passing through the Baltic Sea when a critical power cable between Finland and Estonia abruptly failed.
Several months on, the ship's captain is due to appear in court charged with sabotage,
the first time a NATO member has launched a prosecution against Russia's so-called Shadow Fleet.
Our guest today is The Times' Berlin correspondent and the author of Baltic,
The Future of Europe, Oliver Moody.
Oliver, thanks for being with us.
Before we focus on this specific case, just outline if you can,
what exactly is the Shadow Fleet and what's its purpose?
It's a bit of a nebulous term that has come into common parlance to describe anything between 400 and 1500 vessels,
primarily oil tankers, often...
flagged to third-party countries such as Liberia or Gabon that don't enforce Western sanctions against Russia that are primarily used by Russia to evade the G7 price cap on its oil exports,
which are absolutely a pillar of its war economy and have only become more significant
since Russian gas has struggled to find buyers.
And has this proved an effective method of evading sanctions for Moscow?
We hear of tactics like transmitting false GPS data, ship-to-ship transfers at sea.
How hard is it to police the fleet's movements when it comes to maritime law?