Russia has used its so-called “ghost fleet” of aging commercial vessels to evade sanctions on oil exports, but experts say the ships have another purpose: to traffic arms to Russian allies in eastern Libya.
A recent report by Interpol documents shipments of weapons and equipment from Russian ports on the Black Sea to Tobruk in eastern Libya to supply Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army.
Mercenaries from Russia’s Africa Corps, formerly the Wagner Group, have taken over a Libyan military base in the east. From there, they have also shipped weapons to the Rapid Support Forces fighting government troops in Sudan’s ongoing civil war. Russia is also using the Tobruk port to support military juntas in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, which have hired Russian mercenaries to fight insurgent groups across the Sahel.
Among the ships Russia has used to transport weapons is the Barbaros, a Cameroonian-flagged freighter that was spotted in early 2024 carrying Russian military vehicles as it crossed the Bosphorus Strait in Turkey.
Photos of the Barbaros posted to X by Yörük Işık, who runs a consultancy analyzing maritime activity on the Bosphorus, prompted an Interpol investigation. Isik photographs all the ships that transit the Bosphorus near his home.
Interpol revealed that the Barbaros had obscured its location by altering its Automatic Identification System, which ships use to keep track of each other to avoid collision. Manipulating or shutting off the system is a tactic frequently used to hide ships engaged in illicit activity.
Interpol also found that the Barbaros has changed its name three times and had registered under 10 different national flags over the last 12 years. While the Barbaros flew a Cameroonian flag, other Russian ghost fleet ships have flown the flag of Gabon as well as Liberia.
The tactics of the Barbaros are in line with actions taken by other members of Russia’s ghost fleet, a collection of more than 1,000 aging, poorly insured vessels Russia has used to ship its oil and other materials in violation of United Nations sanctions.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the global ghost fleet has “grown like a tumor,” researcher Elisabeth Braw recently told the Kyiv Independent.
“Because these vessels are up to no good, they often disguise their whereabouts,” Braw added. “They manipulate or turn off their Automatic Identification Systems.”
International investigators have tracked Russian ghost fleet vessels taking similar actions while moving between Syria, where Russia has a naval base, and Libya. In one case, a ship believed to be carrying weapons from Syria to Libya altered its identification system in order to make it appear that the ship was off the coast of Beirut. Instead, it accidentally transmitted a location far inland at Beirut’s airport.
Interpol reported that Russia is using its illicit weapons shipments not only to fuel the conflict in Libya but also to expand its influence across an insecure region filled with important resources. Russian mercenaries are typically paid for their services across Africa through access to natural resources such as gold and diamonds.
Russia’s decision to operate a ghost fleet after it invaded Ukraine greatly expanded the number of the dangerous vessels on the sea, from a few hundred operated by Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela, to several thousand. Because they’re old and poorly maintained, the ships pose hazards to other ships and to the environments of the territorial waters of countries where they operate.
“The shadow fleet, in fact, seems intended not just to transport goods to and from Russia but to cause harm to other countries,” Braw wrote for the Atlantic Council. “The countries that have chosen to trade with Russia by means of shadow vessels clearly do so in the knowledge that such vessels can cause incidents in their waters, but they evidently calculate that the benefits of sanctions-busting trade with Russia outweigh the costs of potential shadow-vessel incidents.”