25JUL

Ukraine says it hit 159 tankers

2 min read

11:58UTC

Ukraine's military said it struck 159 shadow-fleet vessels in 12 days through mid-July, up sharply from 35 strikes in the previous 96 hours.

← Back to Bahrain and Kuwait struck Iran, WSJ reports Jump to analysis ↓

ConflictDeveloping

Key takeaway

Ukraine says it hit 159 shadow-fleet tankers in 12 days, targeting Russia's sanctioned oil trade.

Ukraine's military said it struck 159 shadow-fleet vessels in a 12-day campaign through mid-July, up from 35 in the previous 96 hours ¹. The figure is a Ukrainian military claim rather than an independently verified count, so the scale rests on Kyiv's own reporting. The shadow fleet is the loose armada of ageing, opaquely owned tankers Russia uses to move crude outside Western insurance and shipping channels.

The strikes extend a shift that began when Ukraine moved its maritime drones onto Sea of Azov fuel tankers, cutting traffic . Rather than chase warships, Kyiv is now going after the vessels that carry the oil itself, which puts the campaign directly onto the same ledger as the sanctions lapse driving Russian crude revenue.

Each disabled tanker raises the cost and risk of moving a barrel, and with Western licensing cover gone the shadow fleet is the mechanism Moscow leans on hardest. That makes it the pressure point where Ukrainian drones can bite even while the land front holds.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Russia moves much of its sanctioned oil on a 'shadow fleet' of tankers that operate outside normal Western insurance and registration rules. Ukraine's military said it struck 159 of these vessels over 12 days through mid-July, a sharp jump from 35 strikes in the previous four days. The strikes aim to make shipping Russian oil riskier and more expensive, on top of the sanctions that already restrict who can legally buy it.

What could happen next?

Consequence
A sustained strike rate at this level would push insurance and charter costs up across the whole shadow fleet, not only the vessels directly hit.

Source Landscape

This story draws on centre-leaning sources from United States

United States

LeftRight

Every tanker Ukraine hits, rather than simply sanctions, forces insurers to price in physical destruction risk on top of compliance risk; Western P&I clubs already refuse shadow-fleet cover, so the marginal effect falls on Russia's own reinsurance arrangements and the vessels' owners, who now face both a sanctions discount and a strike-risk premium on the same cargo.

The jump from 35 strikes in the previous 96 hours to 159 over 12 days is a rate change large enough to affect charter rates fleet-wide across the Black Sea corridor, because owners reprice risk across a fleet rather than per vessel.

Consensus view: Maritime security analysts at the Atlantic Council have argued Ukraine's strike campaign aims to raise the shadow fleet's operating cost and insurance risk rather than physically halt Russian oil exports, since sinking a fraction of a multi-hundred-vessel fleet cannot stop the trade outright.

Counter-view: Russian shipping industry figures have argued the strikes mostly hit ageing, already-marginal tankers that owners were planning to retire anyway, limiting the campaign's practical effect on export volumes.

Key tension: Whether the strike rate is degrading the shadow fleet's economics faster than Russia can replace retired tonnage.

Sources:RFE/RL

Mentions:Ukraine →Moscow →Russia →Kyiv →Sea of Azov →Atlantic Council →

First Reported In

Update #25 · Ukraine rebuilds command as front freezes

RFE/RL· 23 Jul 2026

Read original →

Causes and effects

This Event

Ukraine says it hit 159 tankers

Kyiv's naval-drone campaign is targeting the tankers that move sanctioned Russian crude, though the tally is Ukrainian-sourced.

Led to

Ukraine's strikes move to the Azov

The 159-vessel tally extends the shift to Sea of Azov and shadow-fleet tanker strikes.

Occurred 11 Jul 2026

Read story →

Different Perspectives

Oil traders

Sent Brent down 2.29 per cent to $98.38 a barrel on reports that mediation was reviving, moving the price on CENTCOM's quiet night rather than on Trump's same-day promise of a bigger operation with no deadline attached.

Iran

An Iranian official called the same mediation account completely misleading, denying it received any US proposal via Baghdad on the same day Iraq denied delivering one, leaving neither denial able to settle what actually passed between the two capitals.

Iraq

Called groundless the New York Times account that its prime minister carried a US ceasefire proposal to Tehran, a denial that also protects Baghdad's effort to avoid becoming a party to a war fought by aircraft it does not control.

OHCHR

Recorded 17 civilian seafarer deaths since the war began, a population neither the Pentagon nor Iran's Health Ministry counts in its own tally, and called for urgent action on 6,000 crew stranded across roughly 400 vessels in the Strait of Hormuz.

Houthis

Enforced the blockade on Saudi-linked shipping it declared on 20 July by hitting the NCC Masa and then an Aramco facility at Jazan, moving from radio warnings to strikes on land after four days without a confirmed hit.

Saudi Arabia

Struck Houthi military sites near Hodeidah the same day the NCC Masa was hit, while its coalition spokesman insisted Hodeidah, Ras Issa and Salif all remain open to navigation. The distinction protects the ports Yemen's population depends on for food and fuel even while punishing the group behind the tanker strike.