French troops aboard the oil tanker are linked to the “Russian shadow fleet”

The French soldiers went up on an oil tanker who was part of the “Shadow fleet” of Russia, used to escape the sanctions imposed due to the war in Ukraine.

The Boracay left Russia last month and was out of the Denmark coast when unidentified drones forced the temporary closure of several airports last week. It has been anchored off the west of France for a few days.

President Emmanuel Macron said the crew had committed “serious offenses” at a summit of EU leaders in Copenhagen on Wednesday but did not develop.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Russia had no knowledge of the ship.

The AFP news agency cited a source saying that French military staff had embarked on the ship on Saturday.

Macron refused to be shot the question of whether the ship can have been used as a platform for drone flights that caused such a disturbance in Denmark last week.

Brest prosecutors opened an investigation into two counts: refusing the order to stop and not to justify the nationality of the ship’s flag.

Many Western countries have imposed sanctions on Russian energy by limiting imports and capping the price of its oil after the Invasion on the scale of Russia in Ukraine in 2022.

To escape these sanctions, Moscow built what was called a “shadow fleet” of oil tankers whose property and movements could be obscured.

Russia would have a fleet of several hundred oil tankers who are recorded in other countries and are used to export its essence. Macron said that Russia’s shadow fleet contained between 600 and 1,000 ships.

The Boracay, also known as Pushpa and Kiwala, is a Benin flag ship but has been listed under the sanctions of the United Kingdom and the EU on Russia.

He was detained by the Estonian authorities earlier this year to sail without a valid country flag.

He had triggered the Russian port of Primorsk outside Saint Petersburg on September 20 and had sailed through the Baltic Sea and former Denmark before entering the North Sea and continuing the Channel.

He had to arrive in Vadinar in northwestern India on October 20, according to data from the maritime traffic monitoring website. However, it was followed by a French warship after bypassing the Brittany coast, then changed the course and headed east towards the French coast.

EU leaders gathered in Copenhagen under pressure to stimulate European defense after a series of Russian incursions in the EU airspace, and a few days after drones targeted Danish airports.

Copenhagen airport, followed by several Danish airports and military sites in the Jutland peninsula, was faced with drone disruptions last week.

The Danish Prime Minister puts Frederiksen told journalists that “from a European point of view, there is only one country … ready to threaten us and it is Russia, and therefore we need a very strong response”.

Danish police have found no evidence that Russia was late on last week’s drone disruptions, but Frederiksen explicitly linked it to other hybrid attacks such as Russian drones above Poland.

It was part of a model that was to be seen from the European point of view, she told journalists on Wednesday.

The incursions have become the most acute for countries on the eastern flank of the EU such as Poland and Estonia.

A certain number of Member States have already supported plans for a “drone wall” with several layers to detect quickly, then follow and destroy the Russian drones.