Atlantic Council fellow urges Baltic states to follow US in seizing shadow tankers

European states should move from sanctions to actively interdicting Russia's shadow fleet, Justina Budginaite-Froehly, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Europe Center, argued in a commentary published on 22 January. She wrote that while the US has begun seizing suspect vessels, European governments have held back through an overly legalistic reading of maritime law. She said shadow tankers carry about 60% of Russia's seaborne oil exports, may threaten undersea infrastructure and could support drone operations. She called on Baltic and Nordic states to interpret the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea broadly to board and seize such tankers.

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