Dozens of shadow fleet tankers have been left idling in the Gulf of Finland after a Ukrainian drone strike hit Russia’s Primorsk oil port on Friday. By Monday morning, at least 12 vessels were at anchor north of Loksa, waiting for loading operations to resume, according to MarineTraffic data cited by ERR News.
Primorsk is one of Russia’s largest oil terminals on the Baltic, handling nearly 60 million tonnes of crude annually. Regional officials confirmed that the attack caused fires on a vessel and at a pumping station within the port. The Security Service of Ukraine later announced that crude exports from Primorsk had been halted.
Analysts quoted by ERR estimate that the disruption could cost Russia $40–50 million per day in lost export revenue. With up to two-thirds of Russian crude exports moving through the Baltic, strikes on ports like Primorsk and Ust-Luga create significant bottlenecks for Moscow’s shadow fleet.
Ukrainian attacks on refineries inside Russia have already reduced domestic refining capacity by as much as 30 percent, forcing the Kremlin to rely even more heavily on seaborne crude exports.
Photo: MarineTraffic
