The European Union is preparing new sanctions aimed at limiting the Russian "shadow fleet" that transports illicit oil, but it has yet to hear if the Trump administration will join it in targeting the vessels that provide a crucial source of revenue for the Kremlin's war in Ukraine.
The illicit tanker fleet sprang up to evade Western sanctions on Russian oil, allowing Moscow to move crude to buyers in India and China by flagging ships in countries such as Gabon. The U.S. Treasury Department in the waning days of the Biden administration sanctioned 183 vessels used by Moscow.
The Trump administration hasn't dialed back on those sanctions, and it is considering targeting dozens more vessels, people familiar with the matter said. There has been no decision yet, and the administration is still studying various sanctions options, they said.
The U.S. hasn't yet given any indication of whether it will join the EU in the sanctions, as it typically did during the Biden administration.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal this past week, Vice President JD Vance said the U.S. could pressure Russia using economic or military "tools of leverage" if Moscow didn't agree to a peace deal with Ukraine. He didn't spell out the details of what those tools would be.
Daniel Fried, a retired U.S. diplomat who coordinated sanctions policy against Russia during the Obama administration, said additional measures targeting the shadow fleet could be a "relatively low risk" way of increasing the impact of a regime already announced by the Biden administration.
"It needs to be enforced," said Fried, who added that only a fraction of the vessels now engaged in the illicit trade have been sanctioned. "The Europeans would support it. It would be a signal that Trump isn't going to cave to Putin, and not be Putin's patsy."
EU officials are in the final stage of agreeing to list more than 70 vessels from Russia's shadow fleet with a decision expected to be taken formally when foreign ministers meet Feb. 24, the third anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
By mid-December, the bloc had banned 79 vessels from entering EU ports and from a range of European shipping services, as well as imposing sanctions on shipping responsible for transporting Russian crude oil or oil products.
The vessels ...
