Polish Military Responds to Shadow Fleet Tanker Acting Suspiciously

tanker at sea — A sanctioned tanker was ibserved performing suspicious maneuversi n the Baltic (iStock)

Tensions remain high in the Baltic with the latest incident involving a shadow fleet tanker transpiring late on Tuesday, May 20. Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk and other government officials reported that the Polish military had been used as a deterrent after a shadow fleet tanker was observed “performing suspicious maneuvers.”

“After the effective intervention of our military, the ship sailed,” Poland’s Prime Minister wrote on social media. He said the vessel was a tanker in the Russian shadow fleet covered by the sanctions.

Poland’s Ministry of National Defense provided additional details, saying that the tanker had been tracked with reconnaissance and that they had observed a tanker in international waters in the Baltic performing suspicious maneuvers. The tanker was in the vicinity of an undersea power cable connecting Poland and Sweden.

A Polish aircraft was dispatched to the area. The patrol plane appeared to scare away the tanker.

Poland’s state electricity transmission system, PSE, later reported that a cable was functioning normally. The Prime Minister, however, said the ORP Heweliusz, a survey ship operated by the Polish Navy, was sailing to the scene. The Ministry of Defense confirmed that the vessel would carry out a survey of the sea floor in the area. In the past, other nations had been able to find trails left by anchors dragged on the sea floor that were used to damage undersea infrastructure.

An official speaking to Reuters later identified the suspect tanker as the Sun sailing under the flag of Antigua. The Equasis database lists the vessel as a 159,000 dwt crude oil tanker owned by Turkish interests. Its AIS signal shows it was traveling from India and reporting a destination of Tallinn, Estonia.

Polish officials said they would be conducting a meeting on Thursday at the country’s Maritime Operations Center in Gdynia to review maritime security. The Prime Minister is expected to attend.

The Chief of the General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces, Wies?aw Kuku?a, noted that NATO had already agreed to deploy additional naval assets in the Baltic after last week’s incident. Estonia tried to stop a shadow fleet tanker for an inspection, and the vessel refused to change course. At the same time, a Russian fighter jet briefly traveled into Estonian airspace in what is believed to be a defense of the tanker. NATO planes were also overhead observing while Estonia decided to escort the vessel from its waters.

Baltic and Scandinavian nations increased their patrols of the region earlier this year after the incident in which Finnish undersea assets were damaged. There were several other incidents, all linked to shadow fleet tankers, which also resulted in NATO deploying additional resources to the region.

In the past week, both the European Union and the UK dramatically increased the number of sanctioned tankers in the Russian oil trade. Political leaders said the goal is to further restrict the Russian oil trade, while Russian officials have vowed to defend the tanker fleet.