Alexey Belogoryev, Research and Development Director of the Institute for Energy and Finance, commented to Kommersant FM on the risks of the Russian "shadow" fleet vessels detention by the EU and the UK.
How far Europe is ready to go is still an open question, Alexey Belogoryev noted:
"When a ship changes its flag for some reason after leaving the port, from the point of view of the convention maritime law, this is a violation and gives the right to coastal states to inspect and stop it. But if you follow international law, which is still in force, you cannot detain such ships for a long time. Rather, the question is that there is an attempt to scale this phenomenon.
The second and much more threatening aspect is the already quite numerous cases when the US Navy simply arrested, even, in fact, confiscated the cargo of ships traveling, in particular, from the ports of Venezuela. Whether the UK, France and other European countries will take the same steps is an open question. Are they ready to directly violate international law? At the same time, Russian Pacific companies have already done everything that could be redirected through the Arctic ports to the east. The infrastructure is designed in such a way that the bulk of Urals oil supplies and a significant part of petroleum products supplies have to be transported through the Baltic and Black Seas. It is impossible to change this situation in the near future. But this concerns, in fact, most of the Russian maritime trade, and it has always been so."
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