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France has detained the captain of an oil tanker that was sailing close to Denmark during a series of drone incursions last week, saying it was questioning him over unrelated naval infractions including failing to obey police orders.
French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said the vessel was part of the Russian shadow fleet, which Moscow has used to evade western restrictions on its energy sector since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
“Thank you to our navy commandos and the crews who intervened . . . to board a tanker from the Russian ghost fleet, currently anchored off Saint-Nazaire, as part of an investigation” into where the ship was registered, Lecornu said in a post on X.
The oil tanker was tracked off the coast of Denmark last week at about the same time as drones were spotted in Danish airspace near military sites, leading to interruptions in air traffic.
French prosecutors said that the ship, Boracay, which had recently changed its name from Pushpa, was “considered to be an unregistered vessel under international law” and was carrying “a large cargo of oil” bound from Russia to India. The captain and a crew member detained with him, both Chinese nationals, were released after questioning.
The captain was placed under formal investigation over allegations that he refused to comply with requests from naval commandos who boarded the ship to check its registration. He was ordered to appear in a criminal court in Brest in February. The second person was released without further legal action.
Danish and French authorities have declined to comment on whether the vessel was linked to the drone incidents, but European leaders in recent days have stressed the importance of cracking down on shadow fleet vessels to tighten defences against hybrid warfare.
“This focus on the shadow fleet is so important [and] we need to intensify that, particularly in light of what has happened in the past few days,” UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said on Thursday during a discussion panel with French President Emmanuel Macron and other leaders in Copenhagen that referenced Russian provocations.
The 244 metre-long tanker has repeatedly changed names and registrations and is now sailing under the flag of Benin, according to ship-tracking service MarineTraffic. It is listed under British and EU sanctions against Russia.
Baaj Shipping Ltd, listed as the owner and manager of the Pushpa on the EU’s Equasis shipping database, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The vessel departed from a Russian oil terminal near St Petersburg on September 20, continued sailing west off the coast of Denmark and has been off the coast of France since Sunday, according to MarineTraffic.
Pushpa’s activity, including confirmed AIS spoofing and identity inconsistencies, ‘‘matches patterns commonly associated with maritime evasion tactics”, Dimitris Ampatzidis, an analyst at Kpler-owned MarineTraffic, said on X.
Macron declined to comment on Wednesday on whether the ship was connected with the drone incursions in Denmark, saying only that it was a “good thing” that French authorities had intervened, given that there “were some very serious wrongdoings committed by this crew”.
Macron also said it was “extremely important to increase the pressure on this shadow fleet, because it will clearly reduce the capacity to finance this war effort for Russia”. European army chiefs and Nato officials would soon meet to determine what “joint actions” could be taken as a “step up in deterrence policies” against such stateless vessels, he said.
Danish officials have said they do not know who was behind at least four nights of drone sightings at airports and military sites last week, only that the “large” unmanned aircraft were launched by a “professional actor”. The incidents are viewed as particularly brazen, since the drones flew with lights on at night to ensure they were seen from the ground.
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The main theory among experts and European officials is that at least some of the drones could have been launched from a ship. They have similar suspicions about drones observed this summer over critical infrastructure in northern Germany.
German authorities last week reported sightings of drones over the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein. A cargo ship in the Kiel canal was searched last month over suspicions that it had been used to launch drones and spy on German critical infrastructure.
Suspicion over the drones in Denmark has centred on vessels belonging to Russia’s shadow fleet of oil tankers, which have already been tied to several incidents of sabotage in the Baltic Sea, when energy and data cables and pipelines were cut.
Denmark has had to call in security help from allies, including Sweden, Germany, France and the US, to ensure that two European summits could proceed as planned this week in Copenhagen.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen refused to comment on whether shadow fleet vessels were under suspicion.
But she added: “I can say in more general terms that we are facing a lot of problems with the shadow fleet. That has been the case, especially in the Baltic Sea, for quite a long time. And we are working very closely together to fight this situation.”
Additional reporting by Anne-Sylvaine Chassany in Berlin. Data visualisation by Andrew Francisco.