Early Sunday morning, the Belgian armed forces intercepted a tanker suspected of being part of the Russian ghost fleet with which Moscow is trying to evade international sanctions. The ship, identified as the Etherhas also been on the US blacklist since last year within the framework of sanctions against Iran. The Belgian Federal Prosecutor’s Office has already opened a criminal investigation, after verifying that the ship was sailing under a “probably false” Guinean flag, a fact that Defense Minister Theo Francken has subsequently confirmed.
“It is not a trivial observation of the sanctions,” Francken stressed at a press conference from the Belgian port of Zeebrugge, to where the oil tanker intercepted was towed on Sunday morning in the nighttime operation “Blue Intruder” supervised by several ministers and military officials and in which almost a hundred soldiers supported by French troops participated, as explained by those responsible for the operation.
“During the last few hours, our armed forces, with the support of the French Defense, have boarded an oil tanker belonging to the Russian ghost fleet,” Francken had announced on social networks during the early hours of the morning. For its part, the Belgian Prosecutor’s Office claims to have identified the intercepted vessel as the Ether: “An oil tanker that appears to be sailing under the flag of Guinea, but there are indications that it is a false flag,” he noted.
600 ships of the ghost fleet
The ship, which has been on the list of almost 600 Russian ghost fleet tankers sanctioned by the EU since October last year, was allegedly headed back to Russia, but was towed to the Belgian port of Zeebrugge, where it arrived on Sunday morning. He Ether It has also been listed since July 2025 in although in this case it was identified as an oil tanker sailing under the Panamanian flag.
The head of the Belgian Defense, General Frederik Vansina, revealed this Sunday that Belgium was monitoring the Ether for some time because the tanker showed “numerous signs of its participation in operations of the Russian ghost fleet.” Among others, the tanker frequently sailed between Russia and South America and regularly deactivated its identification systems. In addition, he sailed under different flags, Vansina said, according to the national press.
The highest Belgian and French authorities have also welcomed this Sunday an operation – the first of its kind in Belgian waters of the North Sea – that represents a “hard blow” to the Russian ghost fleet and demonstrates that “the Europeans are willing to cut off the sources of financing by applying sanctions,” the French president, Emmanuel Macron, declared on social networks, according to which French Navy helicopters participated in the boarding of the oil tanker. “Belgium will defend international maritime law and the security of its territorial waters,” stressed the Belgian Prime Minister, Bart De Wever. “As long as Russia continues its war of aggression against Ukraine, we will continue to act. Sanctions only make sense if they are applied. Today we have applied them,” said its deputy prime minister and head of Foreign Affairs, Maxime Prévot.
A major blow to the shadow fleet: in the North Sea, our French Navy helicopters helped last night in the boarding by Belgian forces of an oil tanker under international sanctions.
Europeans are determined to cut off the sources of funding for Russia’s war of aggression…
— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron)
An international journalistic investigation revealed at the beginning of the year that more than 500 tankers from the Russian ghost fleet sail under the false flag of more than 30 countries, or without any flag at all. Between November 1 and February 1, 61 of these ships crossed European waters, 20 sailed through the North Sea and at least 13 crossed Belgium’s exclusive economic zone, according to this investigation carried out by Belgian, Dutch, British and German media. After learning these data, the Belgian Minister of Justice, Annelies Verlinden, announced in mid-February that a constitutional amendment was being prepared to allow ships from the Russian ghost fleet to be intercepted in Belgian waters, given that national law until then lacked the legal basis to stop or board this type of ships, according to the Belga news agency. France released it in mid-February intercepted at the beginning of the year when it was sailing between Spain and Morocco, coming from Russia. As announced in X by the French Foreign Minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, the Grinchwhich was traveling under the flag of Comoros, left French waters “after paying several million euros and suffering a costly three-week detention.”
