What’s in a name? For sanctioned tankers taking the Russian flag, it seems, a plan. Since late July, 32 Aframaxes on the UK sanctions list have reappeared under the names of gemstones, the series our October film followed, from Kuntsit (kunzite) to Biryuza (turquoise). The larger crude tankers meanwhile have been given the names of fortifications, among them Tsitadel (citadel), Redut (redoubt), Garnizon (garrison) and Tverdynya (stronghold). Each new name came with a Russian radio identity, part of a wider move that has 45% of the sanctioned ships seen in Danish and Finnish waters since 1 August broadcasting as Russian.
Named from above
A ship moving to a Russian register usually takes a Russian name, so the language says little. The themes say more. Gemstones have gone to the Aframaxes and fortresses to the largest ships, and the scheme runs across different owners and managers on paper: one address in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong, is home to the single-ship owners of a fortress tanker and five gemstone tankers, and the two Ajman managers in this week’s other story between them run ships from both series. That points to the names being picked once, above the companies on the record, by one person or a small group. The move to the Russian flag can be read as defiance or as a search for a state that will stand up for its ships, and the fortress names fit either reading.
Where the paperwork sits
Two companies registered in the same Ajman Free Zone building, with consecutive business-centre numbers, now manage 23 sanctioned tankers under the Russian flag. The Russian Maritime Register of Shipping approved them to run Russian-flagged oil and chemical tankers on 20 and 21 July, and the first tanker passed to them within days. The UK has listed 22 of the ships and the EU 19, yet neither company appears on any of the sanctions lists the Maritime Watch tracks. Ajman has been here before: in July 2025 the EU and the UK sanctioned Intershipping Services LLC, which the EU described as the operator of Gabon’s international ship registry, at an Ajman address.
Russian class, narrow win
The Russian Maritime Register of Shipping won a narrow victory in the EU’s General Court on 4 November, which annulled the 2022 withdrawal of its EU recognition but left the ban on transactions with it in place. The judgment records the Register’s own count of 4,207 ships in class, 3,772 of them under the Russian flag, and Asia-Pacific inspection records show 46 tankers classed by the Register under non-Russian flags, all but one on the EU or UK lists.
There is much more in the archive of more than five thousand articles at maritimewatch.eu, including a stray editing note in an EU report that hints at fears of “retaliation” over EMSA’s shadow-fleet work. For a free trial, write to editor@maritimewatch.eu.