Moscow: India imported 5.4 million tonnes of Russian Oil worth €2.1 billion between January and September 2025 aboard 30 vessels sailing under false flags, a European think tank claimed on Thursday.
The shipments made India the largest national destination for crude moved by Russia’s expanding “shadow fleet,” the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) said in its report.
Western nations imposed sanctions on Russian energy after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Moscow is accused of skirting those curbs by using ageing tankers with obscure ownership, falsified registrations and disabled tracking systems to deliver crude to buyers including China, India and Turkey.
CREA said 113 Russian-linked vessels flew false flags in the first nine months of 2025, carrying 13% of Russia’s crude exports — about 11 million tonnes valued at €4.7 billion. “As of September 2025, there were 90 Russian ‘shadow’ vessels operating under false flags – a six-fold increase from December 2024,” it said.
The report however, did not give a break-up of the destinations the shadow fleet had sailed to.
When asked about false-flagged ships ferrying oil to India, CREA said 30 such vessels shipped crude oil to Inda during the first nine months of 2025. “Of the EUR 4.7 billion of Russian oil transported on falsely flagged tankers in the first three quarters of 2025, EUR 2.1 billion (5.4 million tonnes) was transported to India,” CREA said.
Traditionally reliant on Middle Eastern oil, India significantly increased its imports from Russia following the February 2022 Ukraine invasion.
Western sanctions and reduced European demand made Russian oil available at steep discounts.
As a result, India’s Russian crude imports surged from under 1% to nearly 40% of its total crude oil imports in a short span.
In November, Russia continued to be India’s top supplier, making up for over a third of all crude oil imported by the country.
All vessels at sea must fly a flag granting them legal jurisdiction.
Under the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea, countries can register ships and allow them to fly their flags.
Some nations operate open registries, letting foreign-owned ships register for lower costs and lighter regulations – a practice often used by shippers seeking flexibility.
CREA in the report said 96 sanctioned vessels had flown a false flag at least once this year as of the end of September.
A total of 85 vessels registered at least two flag changes six months after being sanctioned by the European Union, the United States Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) or the United Kingdom, the think tank said.
Six flag registries that never flagged a Russian ship since the February 2022 Ukraine invasion each had at least 10 such vessels each in their fleet by September 2025, totalling 162 shadow vessels, according to CREA.
“The number of Russian ‘shadow’ tankers sailing under false flags is now increasing at an alarming rate. False-flagged vessels carried EUR 1.4 billion worth of Russian crude oil and oil products through the Danish Straits in September alone,” said Luke Wickenden, Energy Analyst and co-author of the report.
“The insurance of any vessel flying a false flag is void, which, combined with the fact that a lot of these tankers are old and have been re-commissioned almost from scrap, increases risk for coastal states which fall on their routes, in the event of accidents or an oil spill.”
CREA urged the EU and UK to spearhead global reforms, noting that false-flag operations violate Article 94 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and pose mounting environmental and security threats to European and British coastlines.
Detaining such vessels, it said, would disrupt Russian export logistics, raise costs and reduce the reliability of oil flows that underpin Moscow’s war effort.
“In addition to the risks of false flagging, we also see that ‘shadow’ vessel operators are taking advantage of capacity limitations of economically weak nations to exploit their flags and existing regulations to gain passage rights to deliver blood oil,” said Vaibhav Raghunandan, CREA EU-Russia Analyst & Research Writer and co-author of the report.
“It falls on the international community to push for reform in flag state regulations, provide support to build capacity for flag registries, as well as detain falsely flagged vessels to constrict ‘shadow’ vessel operations that support and finance Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.”
