Kyiv’s approach has so far been successful: On several days over the past few weeks, no ships managed to dock at Ust-Luga and Primorsk at all, and even now, the ports’ capacities are significantly curtailed. On April 10, only two ships managed to dock at Primorsk, and after that, no ships are scheduled to until April 27. Ust-Luga, meanwhile, managed to receive some more vessels, but the number remains far below its usual volume.
Despite the strategic success, these attacks on Russian ports have created a mighty maritime pileup in the Gulf of Finland, with shiptrackers showing clusters of ships — mostly tankers — at anchor in the small body of water.
That’s because the ships waiting to receive Russian oil have to stay put. Legitimately sailing vessels can quickly be rerouted to other ports and tasks, but shadow vessels operate outside the official shipping system, and they wouldn’t want to call at other ports for fear of being detained. They simply have to wait for Ust-Luga and Primorsk to be repaired.
The result is dozens of ships backed up in the Gulf of Finland — around 40 alone in Estonia’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), with the rest stuck in Finland’s. It’s an extraordinary scene: Rule-breaking ships, many of them sanctioned and barely seaworthy, anchored in Europe’s Baltic coast while Russian ports get repaired.
“From the security perspective, it is better to keep the ships in the anchorage area than allow them to drift around,” said Regina Palandi-Paju, Estonia’s deputy director for National Security and Defense Coordination. “Possible environmental pollution remains, of course, a concern in view of the overall situation — and we monitor the situation closely.”
Thankfully, “there is no noteworthy environmental impact for us so far,” the deputy director told me. If, however, one of the ships spilled during this lengthy stay, Estonia and Finland will have to clean it up.