Putin’s oil tankers are being manned by EU and Ukrainian companies

Dealing with the dark fleet is not always illegal. The EU has sanctioned 68 individual tankers carrying Russian oil and it would be against its rules to crew them, though others on the Lloyd’s register are allowed to export Russian oil to non-EU countries provided it is sold below a certain price. But both legal and illegal exports aid Russia’s war economy and raise issues of national security, as well as environmental concerns, said Gonzalo Saiz, a maritime specialist at the Royal United Services Institute, a London think tank.