An oil tanker suspected of being part of Russia’s ‘shadow fleet’ was taken to waters near Marseille on Friday, a day after it was seized by France’s navy near Sicily, local authorities said.
The vessel, the Deliver, is one of nine ships that have been seized across Europe since the start of 2026, all thought to have been used by Russia to evade Western sanctions on its oil trade.
It was taken to the Gulf of Fos, the Bouches-du-Rhone Prefecture said. The Russian embassy in France called the seizure ‘another case of piracy’ and ‘illegal and unacceptable from the point of view of international law’.
A military source said the tanker was operating under a Cameroonian flag, despite having been formally struck off Cameroon’s registry weeks earlier, meaning it was navigating without nationality and breaching international maritime law.
Original reporting: Appleton, WI News Feed (HLL/CB) — read the source article.
