Russian Tanker Strateg Hid Along Turkish Coast During Black Sea Transit

According to data from marinetraffic.com, the Russian tanker from the shadow fleet was moving along the coast of Turkey, a NATO member country, in the Black Sea, staying close to the coastal zone.

The ship’s route ran parallel to the southern Black Sea coastline without entering the central waters. This tactic attracted the attention of maritime traffic analysts and the OSINT community. In particular, TankerTrackers commented ironically on the observations on X:

“It is interesting to watch how a tanker flying the Russian flag sails as close as possible to the NATO coast to avoid attack by Ukrainian drones,” the authors shared.

This obviously refers to the vessel STRATEG (IMO 9589750, MMSI 273277650), an oil tanker built in 2011 and flying the Russian flag.

At the same time, the media are reporting an increase in the number of incidents involving technical malfunctions of ships involved in the transportation of Russian energy resources in circumvention of sanctions.

As reported by Bloomberg, on January 28, for the second time in a week, a tanker linked to Russia lost control while entering the Mediterranean Sea.

This was the tanker Chariot Tide, which encountered problems near Tangier in Morocco on January 21 when its speed dropped to less than two knots.

After that, the vessel’s navigation status was changed to “unable to steer,” which means loss of control and inability to maneuver safely.

The status of the Chariot Tide was updated to “damaged or under repair,” which heightened the concerns of European authorities.

A week earlier, another tanker, the Progress, which was traveling a similar route with Russian oil on board, received a similar status.

On the same day, the French Navy inspected another vessel involved in the transport of Russian energy resources and directed it to a port near Marseille.

Previously, French President Emmanuel Macron announced the detention of an oil tanker carrying Russian oil in the Mediterranean Sea, confirming the readiness of European countries to more actively counter the activities of the Russian shadow fleet.

However, he later announced the need to release the detained tanker.