For all of the caterwauling about Trump’s supposed pro-Russia sympathies, his decision to strike at Russia’s “ghost fleet” is unprecedented—and likely to cause enormous pain to the Kremlin.
For nearly a decade, President Donald Trump’s domestic enemies have spread the word that he is little more than a Russian dupe—who admires Vladimir Putin and seeks to emulate his style of leadership, if not take orders from him directly. These claims have never had much to support them. Yet they continue to circulate, likely because they have a grain of truth at their center. Trump does respect Putin’s strength. He has treated the Russian president as the leader of a great power, rather than a pariah—a state of affairs intolerable to those who would rather imagine Putin on trial at the Hague.
Nevertheless, claims that Trump is “soft” on Putin miss the mark. The 47th president has pursued a very significant strategy of weakening the economic pillar that has been propping up the Russian Federation’s war machine for the last few years, as it moves with brute force into neighboring Ukraine.
Trump Is Attacking Russia’s “Ghost Fleet”
Despite the sanctions and all the caterwauling from Western sources, Moscow has stood strong. Indeed, Russia’s ongoing prosperity despite those sanctions has made it a symbol of resistance to America’s other adversaries and a source of frustration for the West.
That is, until Trump came along—and decided to use American military power to dismantle Russia’s so-called “ghost fleet,” as part of an overall effort to truly enforce many of the sanctions that went mostly ignored until recently.
Successive US administrations had the option to pursue this strategy. Yet even President Joe Biden, who was far more vocally hawkish on Russia than Trump has been, demurred. Trump has shown no such uncertainty. In so doing, the Americans are removing a critical component of Russia’s wartime economy—at a crucial moment in the war.
Why Sanctions Alone Never Broke Russia
Russia’s ghost fleet has served as a brilliant way to bypass the global sanctions regime that has attempted—and mostly failed—to choke Russia off economically. With their ghost fleet, Russia, a commodities superpower, can illicitly sell oil and gas around the world and generate billions in annual revenue.
That ghost fleet, therefore, is the mechanism that allows for the Russian war machine to roll on and for the Putin government to operate without much in the way of disruption to ordinary patterns of life for most Russian citizens.
All the G7 nations imposed onerous price caps and oil embargoes on Russia to stymie the sale of Russian commodities. The ghost fleet allows Russia to evade these Western-imposed price caps.
This fleet of older, uninsured tankers employs highly deceptive tactics to evade the global sanctions regime. Such tactics, like deactivating AIS transponders, switching the names of their ships, and engaging in frequent ship-to-ship cargo transfers to avoid searches and seizures on the High Seas—along with registering under flags of convenience to hide their true origins—are highly effective at evading international scrutiny.
And, in the bellies of these aging sea beasts, floats Russia’s seaborne energy to buyers in Asia. The main destinations for these ships are ports in China and India. So large is Russia’s ghost fleet that they make up a sizable portion of the world’s total tanker capacity.
So it’s no small thing that the Trump administration is putting the proverbial squeeze on this ghost fleet. For weeks, the US military has been seizing ships belonging to the illicit fleet—complicating Russia’s ability to keep their economy going and their war machine moving in the right direction in Ukraine.
Of course, this has had little direct impact on the frontlines in Ukraine. But the Trump administration appears to have a longer-term commitment to pursuing Russia’s ghost fleet than what many seemed to have originally thought when he started seizing these ships. But now, the question arises: will the Russians abide by these seizures, or will they attempt to use military force to stop them?
Trump May Have Finally Found the Right Leverage over Russia
An interesting event recently took place in the Caribbean Sea. Another ghost fleet ship was seized—but this time, it was accompanied by a Russian submarine. In fact, the US Navy had been alerted that the submarine was shadowing the Russian ghost fleet ship well before the seizure took place. Yet US forces seized the ship anyway.
Clearly, the Americans were probing the Russians to see how far they’d take things. Thankfully, the Russian submarine chose discretion and did nothing to interfere in the seizure of the ship. This is an early indicator that, while the ghost fleet is important for Russia, the Kremlin is not yet prepared to attack Trump over it.
Of course, given the fleet’s importance as an economic lifeline, Russian leadership will almost certainly become more worried if these seizures continue over time.
Still, the fact that this is happening under Trump is significant—especially because of how he was billed as a Russian disinformation agent by his opponents over the years. The great hope now is that, with these persistent attacks on the ghost fleet, Trump might have the kind of leverage he has been otherwise lacking in order to get a more favorable negotiated settlement with Russia over the Ukraine War. But only time will tell.
About the Author: Brandon J. Weichert
Brandon J. Weichert is a senior national security editor at The National Interest. Recently, Weichert became the host of The National Security Hour on America Outloud News and iHeartRadio, where he discusses national security policy every Wednesday at 8pm Eastern. Weichert hosts a companion book talk series on Rumble entitled “National Security Talk.” He is also a contributor at Popular Mechanics and has consulted regularly with various government institutions and private organizations on geopolitical issues. Weichert’s writings have appeared in multiple publications, including The Washington Times, National Review, The American Spectator, MSN, and the Asia Times. His books include Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life, and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy. His newest book, A Disaster of Our Own Making: How the West Lost Ukraine is available for purchase wherever books are sold. He can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.
Image: Shutterstock / Photo Magistr.
