A French prosecutor said police have detained two crew members of an oil tanker immobilized off the country's Atlantic coast which President Emmanuel Macron linked to Russia.
Macron has alleged that the tanker belongs to Russia's so-called shadow fleet of aging tankers of uncertain ownership and safety practices that are avoiding Western sanctions over Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
Stéphane Kellenberger, prosecutor of the western port city of Brest, said Thursday that the crew members presenting themselves as the ship’s captain and chief mate have been in custody since at least Wednesday, The AP news reported.
A preliminary investigation was opened into the crew’s “refusal to cooperate” and “failure to justify the nationality of the vessel” after the Atlantic Maritime Prefect alerted justice authorities Monday, Kellenberger said.
The tanker, which was sailing last week off the coast of Denmark, was cited by European naval experts as possibly being involved in drone flights over the country.
French military spokesman Col. Guillaume Vernet on Thursday said a specialized team of navy commandos boarded the ship a few days ago “in line with international law” when there appeared to be a discrepancy between its apparent nationality and its real nationality. The ship was ordered to stay in place in a safe area, he said.
Col. Vernet said he would not further comment pending investigation.
On Thursday, Macron praised the work of the French navy to “identify the presence of a shadow fleet.”
“You kill the business model by detaining even for days or weeks these vessels and forcing them to organize themselves differently,” he said.
Speaking at a European summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, Macron said “30 to 40%” of Russia's war effort is “financed through the revenues of the shadow fleet.”
“It represents more than 30 billion euros. So it’s extremely important to increase the pressure on this shadow fleet, because it will clearly reduce the capacity to finance this war effort for Russia,” he said.
Macron said the ship was flying a fake flag, but that it was “exactly the same” one which was detained by Estonia earlier this year for the same flag issue.
In April, Estonian public broadcaster EE reported that the ship, then identified under the name “Kiwala,” was stopped outside Tallinn Bay on way to the Russian port of Ust-Luga. At the time, Prime Minister Kristen Michal tweeted that Estonia’s navy had “detained a sanctioned vessel with no flag state” and authorities had boarded the ship -- without specifying.
The ship, now known as “Pushpa” or “Boracay,” left the Russian oil terminal in Primorsk near St. Petersburg on Sept. 20, and sailed off the coast of Denmark. It has stayed off the coast of the French western port of Saint-Nazaire since Sunday, according to the Marine Traffic monitoring website.
The tanker, whose name has changed several times, was sailing under the flag of Benin and appears on a list of ships targeted by EU sanctions against Russia.
Asked by journalists about it, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said he had “no information” on the ship. He also said that many countries were carrying out “provocative actions” against Russia.
The shadow fleet is made up of used, aging tankers that were often bought by nontransparent entities with addresses in non-sanctioning countries and were sailing under flags from non-sanctioning countries. Their role is to help Russia’s oil exporters elude the price cap imposed by Ukraine’s allies.
