The previously detained oil tanker Grinch will leave French territorial waters after paying a fine, the country’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said on 17 February.
According to the minister, avoiding European Union sanctions has a price and Russia “will no longer be able to finance its war with impunity because of its shadow fleet” off the French coast.
“The oil tanker Grinch will leave French waters after paying several million euros and spending three weeks of costly detention in Fos-sur-Mer. What happens next will be,” Barrault stated.
The Grinch tanker, which left Murmansk on 5 January with a cargo of Russian crude oil, was detained off the French coast on 22 January. The vessel is under sanctions by the US, EU, UK, Ukraine and Canada and is suspected of using a foreign flag.
Moscow earlier called the detention of the “shadow fleet” tankers “piracy”.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, speaking in Davos on 22 January, called on European partners to follow the example of the United States, which stops tankers of the Russian “shadow fleet” and confiscates their cargo.
The “shadow fleet” are tankers that Russia uses to circumvent sanctions against its oil industry imposed after a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.