A Radar for the Shadow Fleet

Ever wondered how openly Russia dodges sanctions, right under our noses?

There's been a lot of talk in the media about Russia's shadow fleet. Experts have been rightly worried about how Russia uses it to get around sanctions, and especially about the fact that these ships, often aging and poorly maintained tankers, haul enormous volumes of oil across the Baltic Sea.

Looking for myself

Last week I got curious enough to dig in. I combined AIS data, the position signals that ships broadcast over the Automatic Identification System, from Digitraffic, Fintraffic's open real-time traffic feed, with the available sanctions data.

The goal was a more realistic picture of two things: how many shadow-fleet vessels are actually moving around the Baltic, and how close they pass to the critical infrastructure on our seabed, meaning the submarine cables and gas pipelines.

What it shows

The result turned out interesting enough that I decided to publish it: a little map I'm calling Varjolaivasto-tutka, a "shadow fleet radar."

The short version is that a surprising number of sanctioned tankers (the ones highlighted in red) are moving through the Gulf of Finland at any given moment, and quite a few of them sailing very close to our critical cables and pipelines.

I know, and you should know too, that this is a demo built on open data, not an intelligence product. AIS can be switched off or spoofed, and sanctions lists are a moving target, so treat it as a rough picture rather than the truest truth.

Where it goes next

I already have a backlog of ideas for where to take this. But I'd genuinely love to hear what you think, what's useful, what's missing, and how you'd develop it further.