Ukrainian attack UAVs continue to hunt down Russian shadow fleet around Sea of Azov

The Ukrainian armed forces are compounding their campaign of targeting Russia’s energy infrastructure, which is causing significant petrol shortages across Russia and imposing an energy and logistics siege of the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula, with an onslaught against Moscow’s ‘shadow fleet’ tankers in the Sea of Azov and Kerch Harbour.

Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces (USF) assert that they struck a total of 116 Russian vessels in the nine days up to 14 July 2026 under what they call Operation ‘MoLoChKa’ [Dairy], which began on 6 July.

After detailing their latest attacks in the early hours of 14 July – in which their attack unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) struck five tankers, five cargo ships and a tugboat in the Sea of Azov – the USF explained the rationale for Operation ‘MoLoChKa’ on their X social media account.

“Despite international sanctions, Russia continues to export oil through its shadow fleet, using the revenues to finance its war against Ukraine,” the USF stated. “The goal of the operation is to systematically disrupt the enemy’s logistics chain. Disabling tankers, cargo ships and auxiliary vessels complicates the export of oil and petroleum products, limits maritime transport capabilities, and reduces the enemy’s ability to supply fuel to its forces and occupation grouping in temporarily occupied Crimea. In this way, operators of the Unmanned Systems Forces weaken one of the key elements of Russia’s military logistics and sources of funding for its aggression.”

In a posting on the Telegram social media channel on 14 July, the USF commander, Major Robert ‘Madyar’ Brovdi, explained how Operation ‘MoLoChKa’ was in particular targeting Russia’s smaller ‘feeder’ tankers.

“The paralysis of the Russian Federation’s feeder fleet (small and medium-sized ‘courier’ flat-bottomed tankers, 140 m long with a deadweight of 7,000 tonnes each), as a significant component of the Russian Federation’s shadow fleet, effectively makes it impossible to export ‘black gold’ from the Russian Federation’s port oil transhipment bases and loading terminals via the Volga–Don Canal and the Sea of Azov to large tankers, which, due to their draught, cannot enter the oil terminal or port and are therefore forced to be loaded from the tanks of those courier tankers in the Black Sea, taking on board the volume from 12–15 such vessels skimming the water’s surface,” stated Major Brovdi.

“Furthermore, the burning of these ‘worm-like camel’ tankers (and the tugs that persistently haul them across the sea after they have been hit) restricts the delivery of scarce petrol to Crimea through the narrow bottleneck of the Azov Sea’s shallow waters, leaving road and rail tankers as the primary – and highly dangerous – method of delivery, which are also under the fire control of the Freedom-Loving Ukrainian Bird [ie Ukrainian attack UAVs], whether on tarmac or railway tracks.”

While it is difficult to accurately determine the size of Russia’s global shadow fleet, as it uses shell companies, hidden ownership networks and frequent reflagging to obscure its operations, maritime and defence analysts have estimated that between 1,000 and 1,600 vessels are involved.

Ukraine’s European allies have sought to escalate their response to Russia’s shadow fleet operations by deploying military interceptions, co-ordinated choke-point inspections and sweeping economic sanctions.

For example, on 22 January 2026 in the Mediterranean the French Navy intercepted and impounded the tanker Grinch, which had sailed from Murmansk through Strait of Gibraltar, while on 14 June UK Royal Marine Commandos boarded and detained the sanctioned the oil tanker Smyrtos south of the Isle of Wight while it was sailing westbound through the English Channel, having departed from an oil terminal near St Petersburg.

European navies and maritime authorities are meanwhile actively inspecting suspect vessels passing through the English Channel, the Danish Straits, and the Gulf of Finland.

Additionally, under the EU’s 20th sanctions package against Russia, adopted on 23 April 2026, Brussels officially blacklisted 632 tankers as suspected shadow fleet vessels, building heavily upon previous smaller waves of designations from its 16th and 17th sanctions packages.

However, beyond these measures, it is Ukraine’s USF directly taking the fight to the shadow fleet in the Sea of Azov region that will most acutely disrupt Russia’s sanctioned oil trading and tighten the energy noose around Crimea.