Three of five Iranian oil tankers struck by the US military on 8 September were also involved in Russia’s oil trade and sanctions-evasion network, according to Ukraine’s presidential sanctions commissioner Vladyslav Vlasiuk.

Russia’s shadow fleet is a network of aging, often opaque-owned tankers used to transport Russian oil while evading Western sanctions, price caps, and restrictions. Moscow uses these vessels to continue generating income from global sources to finance its war against Ukraine.

Vlasiuk told Ukrinform that the vessels – Kaviz, Charminar, and Riesco – had carried Russian oil, visited Russian ports, or operated alongside vessels already under sanctions.

Russia’s shadow fleet overlaps with Iran’s

The three tankers illustrate how Russia and Iran’s efforts to move sanctioned oil can overlap. According to Vlasiuk, the networks share vessels, shipping managers, intermediaries, and routes.

Kaviz had called at Russia’s Ust-Luga and Novorossiysk ports and carried Russian oil. It was also linked to Fractal Marine DMCC, a company that became a major operator of vessels used to transport Russian oil after Western sanctions were imposed.

Charminar had visited several Russian ports, including Ust-Luga, Primorsk, Vysotsk, and St Petersburg. Vlasiuk said it was connected to a shipping network controlled by Iranian oil magnate Mohammad Hossein Shamkhani, which handles both Iranian and Russian oil.

Riesco had also transported oil from both countries, including through ship-to-ship transfers involving other sanctioned tankers.

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The vessels were already sanctioned

Ukraine and the US had sanctioned all three tankers, while Kaviz was also under sanctions from the EU, UK, Canada, and Switzerland.

The US military struck five Iranian oil tankers on 8 September, according to Ukrinform, following Iran’s attempts to attack a US Navy vessel. The strikes brought renewed attention to the networks used to transport Iranian oil despite sanctions.

Russia rehearsed an operation to disable critical undersea cables near Norway’s Svalbard archipelago this spring, according to two Western officials cited by Reuters.

The exercise comes as Russia continues a broader hybrid campaign against European countries, using covert sabotage, cyberattacks, espionage, and surveillance of critical infrastructure alongside its war against Ukraine.

The operation involved Russia’s Main Directorate of Deep-Sea Research, known as GUGI, which used deep-sea submersibles to simulate deploying technology designed to disable undersea cables.

British, Norwegian, and US forces tracked the Russian vessels and confronted them at sea, preventing them from completing the exercise, the officials told Reuters. The vessels eventually left the area.

No cables were damaged.

Russian forces rehearsed cable attacks

The operation took place near two 1,400-kilometer fiber-optic cables connecting Svalbard with mainland Norway. The cables carry satellite data from SvalSat, the world’s largest satellite ground station and part of NASA’s Near Space Network.

Britain and Norway disclosed in April that they had uncovered covert Russian activity in Arctic waters, but the details of the operation, including the technology involved and US participation, had not previously been reported.

Norwegian Defense Minister Tore Sandvik said the joint operation sent Russia a message that covert activity would be detected and face consequences.

The US and UK have sanctioned GUGI over its activities in European waters.

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Europe watches its undersea infrastructure

European governments have become increasingly concerned about Russian activity around telecommunications cables, power lines, and pipelines. Reuters reported that since 2023, vessels have increasingly been observed moving slowly over or near sensitive infrastructure, raising concerns that they could be mapping potential targets.

NATO has expanded monitoring in response. Its Baltic Sentry operation increases surveillance around critical infrastructure in the Baltic Sea, while the UK-led Nordic Warden monitors northern European waters.

Windward data cited by Reuters showed that vessels classified as “drifting” in the North Sea increased 52% in 2025, to 13,079. At least 11 subsea cables were damaged or cut in the Baltic between October 2023 and the end of 2025.

Western officials are increasingly concerned that Russia could use sabotage against European infrastructure to test NATO's response without immediately triggering open conflict. Some US intelligence officials have raised the possibility that Moscow could eventually test the alliance’s Article 5 mutual-defense commitment, according to Reuters.

Russia’s Defense Ministry did not respond to Reuters’ request for comment. The Kremlin has repeatedly denied conducting sabotage operations in NATO countries.

The Svalbard exercise did not damage infrastructure, but it involved rehearsing capabilities that could be used against critical European infrastructure in a future conflict.

The very mechanisms that allow the census bureau to resist partisan interference are coming undone. And Congress is silent

When the constitutional architects of the United States got together, they came up with a crazy plan: “What if we count everyone in the country and allocate political representation that way?”

It was a radical act. Until then, censuses had been used by kings to levy taxes and conscript men into war. With the penning of article 1, section 2 of the US constitution, being counted ensured that states would get financial resources and political representatives. Congress was tasked with building the processes to anchor representation to the population. People wanted to be counted. And politicians wanted their people to be counted more.

danah boyd is the Geri Gay professor of communication at Cornell University and the author of Data Are Made, Not Found: A Story of Politics, Power, and the Civil Servants Who Saved the US Census