Alexei Melnik: The Strikes On The Shadow Fleet Have Sent Russia Into Shock

Even a temporary reduction in oil exports becomes a serious blow to the Russian budget.

Ukraine has opened a new front against the Kremlin - at sea: not only refineries are under attack, but also Russian tankers of the shadow fleet that provide billions for Putin's budget. Three ships are already known to have been hit in the Black Sea, but according to some reports, the damaged tankers could be many times more.

What is known about the real scale of the Ukrainian operation? For comment, Charter97.org turned to Alexei Melnyk, a military expert and co-director of foreign policy and international security programs at the Razumkov Center in Kiev:

- Yes, indeed, Ukraine has claimed responsibility for several of these attacks. Not that it has opened a new front, because this is part of the strategy of depriving Russia of oil and gas revenues. All of this is in the same context as the strikes that are being carried out on oil refining and transportation facilities.

In this case, it is true that tankers at sea were attacked, and Ukraine almost immediately claimed responsibility, which produced a shock not only in Russia itself, but globally. Then, when some explanations on the part of Ukraine were understood, it became clearer that this was not a "tanker war" in the broad sense, but a war against tankers of a certain category.

This is Putin's "shadow fleet", and the targets were chosen at a time when they fell completely out of the category of legal transportation. So it is clear to everyone that it is Russia, but at that very moment the tankers were without cargo, and they did not formally belong to any country. Therefore, the Kremlin formally has nothing to claim, because these ships were not listed as property of the Russian Federation.

- Will the AFU, by strikes on tankers and Novorossiysk, be able to actually stop Russian oil exports through the Black Sea?

- Unfortunately, probably not, but even a temporary reduction in these volumes or a partial reduction in the longer term is still significant, because this is one of the main revenue items of the Russian budget.

The second point is that these attacks coincided with global processes in the market. And the sanctions that were imposed by the Trump administration have also affected the demand for Russian oil and the decline in its price due to the discounts that Russia is forced to give. This is the kind of cumulative effect that should have a fairly serious result.

The fear of secondary sanctions from the US and questions about the safety of its own tanker fleet have encouraged buyers of Russian oil to reconsider how profitable, how risky and how safe it is. There are risks associated with both military threats and the likelihood of falling under secondary sanctions by the United States.

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