A Russian "shadow fleet" oil tanker sank in the port of Ust-Luga in the Leningrad region. There were three explosions during engine start that caused the engine room to flood.
This unfortunate accident casts doubt on the sea-worthyness and safety of all Russian shadow oil tankers.
To prevent an environmental disaster, all oil tankers leaving Russia should be inspected by the German coast guard when they pass through the Baltic Sea.
If there are any questions about their compliance with German and EU maritime regulations, standards and norms (for example a safety-critical nut that isn't secured with thread locker or shows signs of corosion), they'll be detained for safety until full compliance is achieved.
And then inspected by the Danes before going through the danish strait.
Ah the old sugar in the gas tank trick
I just hope that the no oil spill part is actually true.
Wilshire, I dunno about that source, EADaily. Like, virtually all of the material in the sidebar seems to be taking a swipe at Ukraine.
kagis
https://www.propastop.org/en/2020/12/01/eadaily-a-worker-bee-in-the-kremlins-information-war/
EADaily; a worker bee in the Kremlin’s information war
The Russian news agency EurAsia Daily, abbreviated EADaily, was founded in 2015. It states that its main activity is to give an objective overview of politics and social processes in Eurasia. The editorial office is based in Moscow, with correspondents and observers in several of Russia’s neighboring countries: Armenia, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, as well as in Russia’s dependent regions such as Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transnistria.
The agency has no correspondent in Estonia. The news is collected from the Russian-language media in Estonia (ERR, Postimees, Delfi), as well as from local Kremlin propaganda publications such as Baltnews.
The agency publishes its news on its website eadaily.com
Eadaily.com fills the roll of an intermediary in the three-story structure of the Kremlin’s media machine.
Level I is picking sites that pick up local topics of interest to Kremlin propaganda. For example, Baltnews or Eesti Sputnik, which has now ceased operations.
Level II, intermediary sites, which collect such topics and distribute them to large Russian publications. As an example, in addition to EADaily, Regnum.
Level III is the amplifiers that channel the mediated news to a large audience. These include the most read portals in Russia and the most watched TV channels.
What does EADaily write about Estonia?
The agency often publishes stories about Estonia, but they clearly are not objective. Topics that match the Kremlin’s narratives are picked up. EADaily gives the impression that Estonia is a Russophobic Nazi state.
We moved EADaily to Propastop’s black list
The black list brings together a group of media publications hostile to Estonia, the content of which cannot be considered as balanced press. In the case of the Russian media, the criteria for inclusion on the list is the content of the publications, the connection of important people with the Kremlin’s system of power, as well as the restrictions imposed on them by Estonian allies.
The main reason for moving EADaily onto the black list is because of the agency’s content and editing style. A strong argument for the move is also the close connection with Regnum, where several people in key positions are associated with the Kremlin, such as the editor-in-chief, Modest Kolerov.
We call for the publications on the black list not to be quoted or for the news published there not to be cited without a clear overview of the propagandistic nature of the publication. We also encourage Estonian companies to stop buying ads with sites on the black list.
I know that the story here is really about something unrelated to Ukraine, but you might not want to use it as a source. Just promotes its visibility, probably increases its ranking in stuff like Google Pagerank, and if the information is reliable, my guess is that it'll probably be covered by other sources.
EDIT: The Moscow Times has a story up:
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2025/02/09/russia-probes-explosion-on-oil-tanker-a87921
Or:
https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/blast-partially-sinks-tanker-at-russian-port-of-ust-luga
Don't listen to the western lies, comrades! The tanker was simply promoted to a submarine.
A man—made incident occurred on the tanker during engine start-up, as a result, the engine room was damaged," Governor Alexander Drozdenko said.
It's such a shame there was an accident on one of the shadow fleet ships. Hope nothing comes of the others when they come to port. /s
Sounds like a typical smoking accident.
Gee, I wonder who could have been behind this.
Yeah, that's not very typical, I'd like to make that point.
If the ship is going to have problems like this, they should take it out of the environment.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c23ngk5vgmpo
My understanding was that they were really never intended to be used in the open sea and probably hadn't been maintained very well either.
I mean, I know that you're referring to the Clarke and Dawe skit, but seriously, Russia has been averaging losing more than an oil tanker a month.
Those are different ships. The BBC story is about two oil tankers sinking in the Kerch Strait diving Crimea from Russia. This ship however sank in Ust-Luga, which is the Baltic Sea near St Petersburg.
Someone just made a mistake bro! /s
We should inspect those tankers and boot them out of Kattegat if they are not up to scratch.
Just in case you didn't know the reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM