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In the Black Sea, Ukrainian drone attacks on three tankers selling sanctioned Russian oil have marked a new escalation in the war. The Russian military struck back, hitting three Turkish-owned cargo ships docked at Ukrainian ports recently. Reporter Durrie Bouscaren comes to us from Istanbul, where a key shipping lane is being dragged into a war on its doorstep.
DURRIE BOUSCAREN: The Bosphorus Strait is one of the narrowest, most dangerous shipping channels to navigate, so most commercial ships hire a local pilot, like Captain Nildeniz Sutcu Sen, to help them pass.
NILDENIZ SUTCU SEN: The current is quite impressive when you are passing through.
BOUSCAREN: Sutcu Sen is president of the Turkish Maritime Pilots Association, representing some 500 captains who help steer these ships to safety - all ships.
SUTCU SEN: We don't know the ships there if it is a shadow, if it's carrying this cargo with this broker. We have no idea about it.
BOUSCAREN: That's why Ukraine's attacks on Russian shadow fleet tankers have left her deeply concerned for her colleagues' safety.
SUTCU SEN: The crew inside of ship - they can't choose where to go. They are innocent seafarers on board. They don't have anything to protect themselves, and the attacks are terrifying for them.
(SOUNDBITE OF WATER SPLASHING)
BOUSCAREN: So I'm sitting on these rocks by the shore in Istanbul, and I'm looking out at this big line of cargo ships. It's nighttime. Their lights are on, kind of reflecting in the water, and they're waiting their turn to pass through the Bosphorus Strait and into the Black Sea. And the reason I'm here is that kind of on the horizon is a 900-foot-long oil tanker called the LIA. I'm watching her because she's been sanctioned by the U.S. government for helping sell Russian oil.
YORUK ISIK: This is a ship that is, you know, a prime target. It could be targeted by Ukraine.
BOUSCAREN: Yoruk Isik started ship spotting on the Bosphorus a decade ago as a hobby. He now runs his own consultancy, the Bosphorus Observer.
ISIK: There are some ships - sometimes they do honest trades. LIA is almost exclusively work on sanction-violating routes. Like, its existence is only do this kind of shady business.
BOUSCAREN: Isik says the LIA is a perfect example of a Russian shadow fleet ship. He's tracked it as it sailed between Russia, Singapore and Iran, transporting oil to bypass U.S. and EU sanctions. Right now, the LIA is listed as sailing under the flag of Guyana. But that's likely a fake registration, Isik says, a false flag.
ISIK: If it has no flag, no ownership, it has no insurance. Who's going to pay this?
BOUSCAREN: If it gets hit, there's no one to claim responsibility, and ships like the LIA sail through the Bosphorus almost every single day, Isik says. Oil transported by these shadow ships is a big part of how Russia has financed its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Analysts believe Moscow controls more than a thousand of these tankers globally.
MICHELLE WIESE BOCKMANN: Attacking commercial shipping is something that we haven't really seen since the tanker wars of the 1980s.
BOUSCAREN: Michelle Wiese Bockmann is a senior maritime intelligence analyst at the risk management consultancy Windward. Bockmann says Turkey is in a difficult place here. Turkey is a member of NATO, and it's also one of Russia's top trading partners. While Turkish authorities are supposed to check each vessels' certifications, insurance and flag they fly, the shadow fleet still seems to use it undeterred.
BOCKMANN: These vessels have obviously tricked Turkish maritime authorities into transiting the Bosphorus. You know, it's a very unsafe area.
BOUSCAREN: When these ships become a target, Bockmann says, there's the risk to the crews on board, the environmental risk of an oil spill, and there's the question of who pays for the cleanup when a boat with no flag, no clear owner and no valid insurance is destroyed in a drone strike.
BOCKMANN: One of the hallmarks of the dark fleet is that ultimate beneficial owner is hidden behind byzantine, deliberately byzantine corporate layers in permissive jurisdictions under single-ship companies and brass-plate addresses. So you can't find the person responsible.
BOUSCAREN: When no one takes responsibility, the risks are borne by everyone else.
For NPR News, I'm Durrie Bouscaren, Istanbul. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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