Estonia will not detain Russian ships from the "shadow fleet" in the Baltic Sea due to the risk of military escalation, Estonian Navy Commander Ivo Vark told Reuters.
“The risk of military escalation is simply too high“, he explained.
According to Vark, Tallinn is only prepared to intervene in the event of an immediate threat, such as damage to underwater infrastructure or an oil spill.
As noted by Reuters, the United Kingdom and several European countries, including France, Belgium and Sweden, have stepped up measures to detain old tankers that Western countries believe Russia uses to evade sanctions and export oil.
In May 2025, Estonia reported that during an attempt to stop an oil tanker bound for Russia that Tallinn said was violating sanctions, Moscow scrambled a fighter jet that had entered NATO airspace over the Baltic Sea. and then escorted the tanker into Russian waters, the agency notes.
According to Moscow, EU countries, using the term “shadow fleet“, are engaged in “robbery of maritime communications“, stopping and diverting to their ports ships that they believe are involved in the delivery of Russian cargo. The Foreign Ministry noted in March that “such a concept does not exist in international maritime law, and the detention of tankers is an illegal EU sanction“.
Russia warned of a response, “by all necessary means“ to attempts to turn the Baltic Sea into “internal waters“ of NATO and the EU.