Russia makes enormous profits on this route, says Vaibhav Raghunandan at the non-profit think tank Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (Crea), which is behind the new figures, to Yle.
The Gulf of Finland is an important transport route for Russia and up to a third of the crude oil and oil products that the country sells are transported by sea between Finland and Estonia to the rest of the world.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the EU has tried to limit Russian sales of fossil fuels through sanctions – but in particular regarding oil, export revenues have not decreased significantly.
According to Yle, Russia earned an average of nearly half a billion euros per day in December from its oil trade.
One way to circumvent the sanctions is the use of the now highly topical Russian shadow fleet. Over 70 percent of all tanker vessels that transported Russian crude oil in the Gulf of Finland last year belonged to the shadow fleet, according to Crea.
An oil-laden vessel believed to belong to the Russian shadow fleet is suspected of having damaged several important underwater cables between Finland and Estonia in December.
