The captain was arrested on Tuesday and faces up to a year in prison and a fine, a French prosecutor said on Wednesday.
The ship Tagor was reportedly stopped in international waters on Sunday morning. The ship was seized by France and its allies on suspicion that it was sailing under a false flag.
The Kremlin has called the seizure illegal and equated it with "piracy."
The EU's list of sanctioned Russian "shadow vessels" - ships considered to be used to circumvent sanctions against Russian oil exports - amounts to almost 600.
