'Shadow ships' take pole position on Northern Sea Route
And the Russian sea route administration that previously provided updated public information about Arctic ship traffic no longer delivers reliable data.
The Northern Sea Route (NSR) is a key tool in the Kremlin's plans for Arctic development. But developments are not progressing according to plans.
So far in 2025, the total ship cargo turnover on the sea route amounts to 36,2 million tons, a decline of 1,7 million tons compared with 2024. Putin's original plan was to boost the Arctic shipments to 80 million tons by 2024.
Also oil shipping is down. In 2025, tankers shipped a total of 1,83 million tons of oil between east and west on the 5,600-kilometre-long route, which is 4,2 percent less than in 2024, Telegram channel Sevmorput reports.
The war of aggression against Ukraine and the massive international sanctions have made the Kremlin turn to irregular and shady operations and compromised security standards.
Many of the shipments across the far northern waters now appear as pirate activities operated by 'shadow ships.'
Symptomatically, one of the few ships that was sailing on the route in mid-November was the Buran, an LNG carrier that is sanctioned by the EU, USA, UK and several other countries. The ship previously sailed under the name North Air. It is part of Russia's fleet of 'shadow tankers' used to ship sanctioned hydrocarbons to international markets.
The Buran has, along with its sister vessels Iris, Voskhod and Zarya, repeatedly transported LNG from the sanctioned gas plant Arctic LNG 2. According to Bloomberg, a total of 12 shipments of LNG were made from the banned Arctic project in 2025.
A shadow fleet tanker was also involved in an LNG transshipment at the Saam FSU in the Ura Bay, near Murmansk.
As a matter of fact, a major share of the cargo that in 2025 was shipped on the Northern Sea route was carried by shadow fleet ships. Many of them are not designed for shipping in the Arctic.
In September, a 20-year-old oil tanker sailing under the flag of Sierra Leone, made it across the route. The 240-metre-long Mires does not have ice-class standards and sailed without icebreaker escort.
Few days later, the Lynx, a 275-meter-long tanker without ice-class standards got stuck in the sea-ice. Reportedly, the ship that was carrying about 150,000 tons of oil, had to wait several days at 72° North for assistance. The tanker was on the way from Murmansk to China.
Several experts say that it is only a question of time before an accident will happen. It could trigger environmental disaster in the vulnerable Arctic environment.
The shadow fleet tankers sail on the NSR with the blessing of the Kremlin.
The Northern Sea Route Administration is the state body that manages shipments in the area. The administration is part of the nuclear power company Rosatom and is responsible for granting sailing permissions and monitor ship traffic.
Previously, the body provided publicly available information about all the ships that have been granted sailing permission on the route, as well as about the ship traffic situation at a given time.
However, the NSR Administration no longer provides reliable data. Many of the sanctioned shadow ships that sailed on the route in 2025 were not listed in the registries of the body. Among them the Buran and its three sister ships.
In October 2025, the NSR Administration ultimately closed its entire public online ship traffic service and also made significant access restrictions in other parts of its online services.
The result is reduced availability of information about the situation along the NSR.
According to Ksenia Vakhrusheva, Arctic project advisor at the environmental organization Bellona, Russian authorities are neglecting security.
“The attitude of the authorities towards environmental risks is negligible. It is more likely that we will know about an oil spill from international journalists who monitor satellite images, than from Russian authorities,” she previously told the Barents Observer.
