Russian oil tanker off Gotland threatens oil spill

Nur wenige Seemeilen östlich von Gotland sind regelmäßig große russische Öltanker unterwegs. Ihre Route kann man live im Internet verfolgen. An diesem Tag fährt etwa der Rohöltanker Moskovsky Prospect an der schwedischen Insel vorbei. Ein rund 250 Meter langes, 44 Meter breites Schiff, unterwegs aus dem russischen Primorsk ins indische Sika.

Auch der Rohöltanker Raven kommt vorbei. 270 Meter lang, 46 Meter breit, auf dem Weg von Ust-Luga, Russland, nach Singapur. Und auch die Zircone ist wieder da, sie steht wie immer an ihrem Platz wenige Seemeilen von Gotland entfernt.

Die Zircone kennt man in Schweden schon. Es handelt sich um ein Bunkerschiff. Also eines, das andere Schiffe mit Treibstoff versorgt. Die Zircone fährt unter der Flagge Zyperns und gehört einer lettischen Firma. Mehr als 50 russische Schiffe hat die Zircone im März und April betankt, so beobachtete es der schwedische Sender SVT – und seitdem ging es immer weiter.

Meistens sind es Schiffe, die Rohöl exportieren. Was die Zircone tut, ist nicht illegal. Doch es sorgt in Schweden für große Unruhe. Schließlich wird damit direkt vor Gotland die russische „Schattenflotte“ am Laufen gehalten.

Seit 2022 nutzt Russland in zunehmender Zahl Tankschiffe oft unklarer Eigentümerschaft, um den von der G7 gesetzten Ölpreisdeckel zu umgehen. Der sieht vor, dass Russland kein Öl in Drittstaaten exportieren soll oberhalb eines gewissen Preises. Westliche Schiffe und Versicherungen dürfen dafür nicht genutzt werden. Damit sollen die russischen Einnahmen geschmälert und soll die finanzielle Unterstützung für den Krieg in der Ukraine verringert werden.

Doch Moskau umgeht das, indem es zunehmend alte und schlecht oder gar nicht versicherte Tanker für den Export nutzt und so Rohöl weiterhin zu einem Preis deutlich oberhalb des Ölpreisdeckels verkauft.

Henrik Wachtmeister describes the “shadow fleet” as a “ticking time bomb”. He warns that at some point there will be an accident and a major oil disaster in the Baltic Sea. Wachtmeister conducts research on energy issues at Uppsala University and the Swedish Institute of International Relations, most recently on warfare using energy.

According to Wachtmeister's estimates, the “shadow fleet” now has a size of up to 2,000 ships, with at least five large crude oil tankers always sailing in the Baltic Sea at the same time, as well as a number of smaller ships. The large ones each hold around 700,000 barrels of crude oil, which is more than 100 million liters.

Wachtmeister estimates that around 80 percent of Russian crude oil exports are transported by the “shadow fleet” through the Baltic Sea – and thus also past Gotland. Around 1.2 million barrels of crude oil and 0.6 million barrels of processed oil products, such as diesel or heating oil, are transported daily.

The Swedish island of Gotland, located in the middle of the Baltic Sea, has always been contested. Whoever controls it has power in the region. Russia's enclave of Kaliningrad is only 270 kilometers to the southeast, and Estonia is only 150 kilometers to the northeast. If Russia really wants to attack the Baltic states after the end of the war in Ukraine, Gotland would be crucial for NATO in defending the Baltic states.

In Sweden, this was forgotten for a few years. Gotland was demilitarized and became the island of the sun, as it is called in tourist brochures. Gotland's role as an unsinkable aircraft carrier was no longer in demand. As in Germany, in the early 2000s, Sweden no longer saw Russia as a threat, but rather as an economic opportunity.

At the time, Gotland was happy to accept money from Moscow and in return gave the Gazprom subsidiary Nord Stream part of its port in the industrial town of Slite in the north-east of the island. Gotland, which is so strategically important, thus became a key tool for Moscow to build the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea. As a result of the Russian war of aggression and its destruction, the pipeline is probably history forever. But the enormous infrastructure that was created for it can still be seen today.

In Slite, Nord Stream stored the long pipes of the pipeline on a huge gravel area. The ships arrived at the large quay at the industrial port. Local residents call it “Putinkai”. It is huge, 150 meters long and 30 wide. Russia could have done many bad things with it, says Solveig Artsman. Take Gotland in a few hours, for example. So that the West cannot easily come to help if Russia attacks the Baltics.

Artsman was a member of Gotland's municipal council for more than 35 years. Even in 2008, when the decision was made to cooperate with Nord Stream 1. The 69-year-old woman says she tried to warn her colleagues about Russia. Why did Russia need such a huge pier back then? And why was Nord Stream allowed to decide which ships were allowed to dock in the port? “But they didn't want to listen. It was all about the money back then.” Nobody saw the dangers.

In return, she says, her colleagues in the local council accused her of destroying Gotland, hating Russia and not trusting experts. They said Europe needed energy, especially Germany. She was insulted, bullied and threatened, says Artsman.

In March 2008, the local council voted in favor of cooperation with Nord Stream with around three quarters of the votes. As in Germany, it was said at the time that it was a purely economic project. Later, colleagues showed her a video of Russian President Vladimir Putin singing “Blueberry Hill” in Saint Petersburg. That was in 2010. “Do you really think he's going to start a war?” she was asked, Artsman says. But she was right. No one ever apologized to her for it. “I did what I could back then,” she says today. “But it wasn't enough.”

The island almost took part in the construction of Nord Stream 2, the second strand of the pipeline that Russia and Germany built against the resistance of all other Baltic Sea states, most recently with the help of a dubious foundation in Schwerin that was supposed to prevent American sanctions. Negotiations for this were well advanced on Gotland, and the port was to be rented out again, this time for up to six million euros. But then the government in Stockholm made it clear that it saw security threats. The deal fell through.

After the annexation of Crimea in 2014, Sweden – unlike Germany – began to take a more sober view of Russia. Conscription was reintroduced and the armed forces were increased, even more so as a result of the Russian war of aggression. There are now also several hundred soldiers on Gotland again.

For her, her country's accession to NATO was a moment of great relief, says Artsman. She lives in the idyllic southwest of the island, where wide fields alternate with small farmsteads – the houses made of wood and painted red. Artsman still sees Gotland as being contested. On her cell phone, she shows a photo of a large Russian ship that had been anchored for several days off Visby, the largest town on the island. What was it doing there, she asks.

She is also worried about the Russian fishing boats that are regularly seen off Gotland and may be used for espionage. “Russia will remain Russia, nothing will change that,” says Artsman. It has always asserted its interests in the Baltic Sea and has always had a great interest in the Baltic States. The West just didn't want to admit that for a few years.

The Baltic Sea region has had a lot of experience with attacks below the threshold of war since 2022. There have been and are, for example, destroyed gas pipelines and data cables, instrumentalized migration, GPS disruptions, reports of possible border shifts, and most recently an increasing number of Russian fighter jets entering Swedish or Finnish airspace.

A situation could also arise in which an oil spill would be beneficial for Russia, warned researcher Wachtmeister and his colleagues in a recent report. “An environmental attack could be a possible strategy for Russia to harm the NATO states around the Baltic Sea below the threshold of war.” Moscow would probably not care about an environmental catastrophe caused by an oil spill, says Wachtmeister.

He points out that Russia is also using environmental warfare in Ukraine, for example by destroying dams. However, if an oil spill were deliberately caused, the West would probably react harshly and could reduce Russian oil exports. Russia needs the “shadow fleet” to finance its war in Ukraine.

With these ships, Russia is “very effectively” circumventing the price cap imposed by the G7 and the EU, said Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen recently at a meeting of the Baltic Sea Council. This is an association of the Baltic Sea states without Russia. Valtonen warned that the “shadow fleet” poses a massive threat to the fragile environment of the Baltic Sea and called for sanctions.

In Wachtmeister's view, due to the poor or sometimes completely non-existent insurance of Russian oil tankers, the majority of the costs for cleaning up oil disasters would probably be borne by the affected country. He calculates: In October, the ferry Marco Polo ran aground in southern Sweden. The costs for the clean-up work will probably amount to up to 15 million dollars. The ferry only had fuel on board. If a tanker were to have an accident, a thousand times as much oil would leak out. The Baltic Sea is also particularly at risk in the event of an oil disaster due to its small size, its confinement and the cold, brackish water, warns Wachtmeister, and the consequences for the environment would be catastrophic. It is high time to act.

According to the Swedish government, a Russian SU-24 bomber recently flew over Gotland and was intercepted by Swedish Gripen fighter jets. Even after Sweden and Finland joined NATO, the Baltic Sea is not a “NATO sea”, as is now often said, says Niklas Granholm from the Swedish Defence Research Institute, a civilian research institution that reports to the Ministry of Defence. The term is dangerous because it could lead to a reduction in deterrence against Russia in the region. The sea remains contested.

According to him, the often unsafe and uninsured Russian tankers of the “shadow fleet” move through the Danish shipping routes and the Baltic Sea without pilots, which significantly increases the risks and could lead to an oil spill. In his view, the ships could also be used by Russia for espionage.

But it is unclear what can be done about it. If the Danish Strait were closed to Russian ships, the problem would be completely solved – and Russia's financial means for waging war would be massively reduced. But from Granholm's point of view, the result would probably be an aggressive reaction from Russia. For example, escorting the oil tankers with warships, which could lead to a rapid escalation.

In addition, according to Granholm, stopping the Russian ships would probably contradict the Copenhagen Convention of 1857, which regulates free passage. Granholm can rather imagine that in the future there will be an obligation to take on pilots or to allow environmental and safety inspections of the ships by Danish authorities. Denmark's Foreign Minister Lars Lökke Rasmussen recently said on the subject that his country had formed a group of allied states to examine measures against the “shadow fleet”. However, no concrete steps have been taken so far.

Britain recently imposed sanctions on a Russian insurance company that is considered central to the operation of the “shadow fleet.” It is still unclear what effect this will have. Experts believe that sanctioning individual ships would be more effective.

In the short term, at least the response to a possible oil spill is to be improved. Finland's government and the country's border guard recently called on the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) to better prepare for a possible oil disaster in the Baltic Sea caused by the “shadow fleet”. So far, EMAS has only stationed a single standby ship for oil spill response in the southern Baltic Sea. From Finland's perspective, it should now purchase another ship for the northern Baltic Sea, as the risk of oil pollution has increased significantly, particularly in the Gulf of Finland.