Belgium seizes suspected Russian shadow fleet vessel

Belgium working with France seized a Russian shadow fleet oil tanker in the North Sea late Saturday, as Europe ramps up the targeting of Moscow’s fleet of vessels suspected of carrying sanctioned oil or damaging undersea infrastructure.

Armed forces boarded the ship on Saturday evening and were escorting it to the port of Zeebrugge, Belgium’s Defense Minister Theo Francken wrote on X around 1 a.m. local time Sunday.

France’s President Emmanuel Macron said French helicopters participated in the “major blow for the ghost fleet.”

Prime Minister Bart De Wever congratulated Belgium’s armed forces for “last night’s successful operation” and thanked France for its assistance. “Belgium will uphold international maritime law and the security of its territorial waters,” De Wever added in a post on X.

Belgian Foreign Minister Maxime Prévot said in a separate post that the operation “was carried out within the International Task Force on the Shadow Fleet, alongside our G7, Nordic and Baltic partners.”

The EU has struggled to stop Russia from exporting oil with the shadow fleet. As of December, it had designated about 600 vessels as part of the fleet.