By Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Substack, 7/24/26

EU foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas has backed measures allowing member states to board, impound, and sell illicit Russian shadow fleet oil cargoes. The initiative targets “smuggling vessels” to choke off Moscow’s “wartime revenues” (in a linguistic bid to pretend that these are different in some way from peacetime revenues and that they are critical to Russian military defense, and that none of this has anything whatsover to do with the global energy crisis that will soon sabotage Europe completely).

Kallas would like to see the EU conduct “flag-verification boardings” of ships suspected of carrying Russian in the western Indian ocean and Red Sea, with a view to selling “illegal” oil and refusing reimbursement to Russia.

EU naval operations (such as Operation Irini) have already boarded “suspicious” tankers like the South Star on July 20, 2026, for sailing under false flags and breaking maritime laws.

Member states have authorized operations like EUNAVFOR ATALANTA to carry out flag-verification boardings on suspected sanctions-busting vessels.

The EU’s 21st sanctions package targets over 40 shadow fleet ships, multiple refineries in Russia and Belarus, and various financial channels.

The specific provision in the package that allows member states to confiscate and sell oil cargoes carried by Russia’s “shadow fleet” (i.e. ships carrying Russian oil that the EU has sanctioned and/or is priced above Europe’s ludicrously low “oil price cap,” and/or are ships that don’t waste their money buying protection with Lloyds of London insurance). This mechanism targets vessels operating outside normal maritime regulations to fund the Kremlin’s war effort.

The new framework gives EU member states the explicit “legal” (i.e. illegal under international law) authority to seize “illicit” (because EU says so) petroleum cargo transported by designated sanctions-busting vessels. Discovered oil can be sold off by the intercepting nation, directly depriving Moscow of its primary energy revenues. For the first time, the provision expands beyond the tankers themselves to target the bunkering (refueling) and service vessels that keep the shadow fleet moving.

An additional 41 “shadow-fleet” (oooh, so deliciously spooky) vessels were added to the sanctions list, subjecting them to immediate port bans and an outright denial of maritime services.

To enforce these economic rules, EU “High Representative” the Estonian-Amazonian Warrioress confirmed that those maritime military missions – such as Operation IRINI in the Mediterranean and Operation ATALANTA in the Indian Ocean – are conducting physical “flag verification” boardings on suspected tankers. These maritime interventions ensure that vessels flying false flags to bypass the EU’s $44.10 per barrel oil price cap can be intercepted and handled under the new package.

The price cap, of course, is ridiculously low at a time of crisis on global oil markets when prices can be said to rest anywhere between $85 and $140 a barrel depending on whether we are talking about paper quotes, futures, or money that people actually have to spend to get oil right now. Prices that may suddenly rocket upwards if and when the US and any other major economy exhausts its oil reserves, and when China re-enters the oil market as its most significant consumer.

International reactions to the EU’s 21st sanctions package and its aggressive “shadow-fleet” maritime enforcement span from outright condemnation by Moscow to internal fractures within Europe and calculated caution from global energy buyers.

The Kremlin denounced the Western sanctions as completely illegal and classified the boarding and impounding of its oil as state-sponsored “economic piracy” that violates international maritime law and freedom of navigation.

Russian state maritime entities immediately began moving to re-register and change the flags of shadow-fleet tankers to non-EU, non-Western jurisdictions to evade the physical “flag verification” boardings conducted by EU naval forces.

Moscow dismissed the effectiveness of the package, pointing to Russia’s ongoing ability to redirect energy trade through alternative non-aligned regional lenders and private cryptocurrency networks. There is absolutely no doubt that China will treat the Kallas wet-dream measures with the full contempt they deserve; and I believe India will respond likewise. These major non-Western buyers of Russian crude have largely remained silent on the EU’s maritime mandates. Instead, their commercial entities are quietly restructuring supply chains. They are adjusting by utilizing non-EU operators and shifting service agreements entirely away from companies vulnerable to EU blacklisting.

The provision passed only after intense infighting. Nations with massive shipping industries – specifically Greece, Malta, and Cyprus – fought the initial proposals. Greece ultimately blocked an outright ban on LNG shipping until it secured a major concession allowing Greek firms to continue transporting Russian gas to non-EU clients.

Hawkish member states like Poland expressed frustration with the final text. The Polish Foreign Ministry publicly stated that the watered-down package was not as tough as desired, highlighting how internal pushback weakened the overall punch of the enforcement.

EU ambassadors rushed to freeze the Russian crude price cap at $44.10 per barrel for 12 months. This was a direct response to anxieties that the escalating hostilities involving Iran would automatically spike global oil prices and penalize Western economies.

In brief, under oppressive and infantile leadership and decades’ of brainwashing by its mainstream media whose purpose is to normalize the West’s piratical scheme to force the break-up of the Russian Federation, the EU has gone full lunatic.

Russia-Ukraine

Russia claims to have shot down a total of 571 Ukrainian drones flying over 18 or so locations in the heartlands of Russia, over the past 24 hours. There were three major Ukrainian attacks: the most significant successful target for Ukraine was another WildBerries “logistics” warehouse in a suburb of Saint Petersburg; then, a warehouse in the city of Kirov was also hit – either a military target of the Aviatek plant or, as Mercouris claims today, a poultry farm – if there is any argument as yet unarticulated that minimizes the impact of Ukrainian attacks on Russia, we can rest assured that Alex will find – and some military warehouse or similar facility in Simferopol in Crimea.

There have been two major Russian attacks on Ukraine in this same period, involving 180 or so drones, of which Ukraine claims to have shot down 160, and 10 ballistic guided missiles aimed at targets in Odessa, Pavlohrad, Petropavlivka, Derhachi (north of Kharkiv) and also, in the north, Kurylivka and Radychiv and, west of Kiev, a military event connected with drone technologies on Kapitanivka that bestrides the important M06 highway that connects Kiev to the west of Ukraine and where Russia’s attack left six dead and a hundred injured.

Russia is reportedly re-deploying military air fleets from both the far east and from Murmansk on the Kola peninsula, to air bases in Engels and Saratov in preparation for an upcoming massive Russian strike on Ukraine.

In the ground war, Russia is making advances that are designed to slice off the northeast of Kharkiv oblast and join them to the Russian mainland in three places (1) westward from Konovclovo in Russia to Rubene and Ustynivka, with a view to eventually connecting these westwards to Vasylivka and Zakherivka; (2) from Rubizhne to Shevchenkove; and (3) southward to Savyantsi and Balakliya, flanking the city of Kharkiv to the northwest.

In the critical zone of the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk conurbation near Donetsk, Russian forces have entered Mykolaivka from both southeast and northeast directions, in preparation for closing in on Slavyansk itself. To the south, Russia is making progress in closing the loophole between Kostantynivka and Chasiv Yar, which will give it access to railway lines from that area into Kramatorsk itself.

As I reported in my post yesterday, the Ukraine’s Black Sea ports around Odessa and to the west are now a dead letter, without there being any hope of a revival of the earlier “grain deal.” While re-routing to the Romanian port of Costanza will take care of, perhaps, 20% of this trade, that still leaves a great new logistics headache for Ukraine to resolve.

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Russia Matters, 7/24/26 (Excerpt)

Putin wants to hold on to parts of Sumy and Kharkiv, while Rubio tells Lavrov new ideas are needed: “Russia is no longer willing to return some occupied territories to Ukraine as part of any deal to end the war and plans to retain them as buffer zones,” “people close to the Kremlin” told Bloomberg. Vladimir Putin now intends to retain occupied border areas of the Sumy and Kharkiv oblasts as permanent “buffer zones” and remains determined to seize all of the Donetsk oblast before returning to talks, according to the news agency. “While the U.S. insists no deal to end Russia’s war in Ukraine was reached at the summit last August, Kremlin officials have repeatedly asserted that a package of undertakings existed under a so-called ‘spirit of Anchorage’ agreement between Putin and [Donald] Trump,” according to Bloomberg. Meanwhile, Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio this week pronounced that spirit dead. Rubio took a question on the proposals made during the August 2025 Anchorage summit when talking to press after meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Manila on July 23. In his response, Rubio said of the so-called Anchorage proposals “we’ll have to find new suggestions and new ideas, because certainly that one, it was not acceptable in Ukraine at the time.” Lavrov, for his part, “reaffirmed Russia’s readiness for a political and diplomatic settlement of the conflict,” telling Rubio that Moscow remained committed to proposals put forward at the August 2025 summit, according to a Russian Foreign Ministry statement cited by Reuters. Meanwhile, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow is not optimistic about a quick peace deal, but hopes U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner will visit Moscow when available.