A set of ships with opaque ownership structures and flags of convenience, used to circumvent sanctions and responsibilities.
The shadow fleet designates a set of ships with deliberately opaque ownership structures, registered under flags of convenience and often lacking standard Western insurance, used to evade sanctions or to carry out hostile actions without leaving an attributable trace. In the context of hybrid war, these ships serve as instruments of discreet sabotage, notably by dragging their anchors along the seabed to damage undersea communication and power cables, as illustrated by the repeated incidents in the Baltic Sea since 2024. Their strategic value lies precisely in the deniability they offer, since damage can always be presented as accidental. For marine insurance and war exclusions, the shadow fleet embodies the difficulty of attribution at the heart of the uninsurability of hybrid war.
When a shadow-fleet vessel severs a cable in the Baltic and then invokes an accidental manoeuvre, the absence of proof of intent prevents attributing the act to a state and therefore applying a war exclusion.
navires sous pavillon de complaisance, dark fleet, shadow fleet