24 Brussels: In August, it became known that Vladimir Matveyev, an electrical engineer from the “Volgoneft-212” tanker that sank in December 2024 in the Black Sea with a cargo of fuel oil, allegedly collected arrears in wages in court from the shipowner “Kama Shipping”, which the Russians are now apparently making the “scapegoat” in the corresponding environmental disaster.
In this story, when Russian security forces and courts decided to “cover up” the obvious negligent and illegal actions of their own maritime administration, port authorities and classification societies that issued deliberately fake certificates of conformity for the “Volgoneft-212”, the amount of the collection is noteworthy, 733.4 thousand rubles in five months after the accident, which is approximately $ 1,800 per month.
These funds, which Matveyev received for work on a obviously dangerous vessel, are clearly lower than the salaries of electromechanics on tankers in global shipping, while the attitude towards the crews on the vessels of the Russian tanker fleet itself deserves a separate study of the situation.
Although hundreds of companies for the employment of seafarers operate under the control of the Russian Federation, they have a different dimension in the system of Russian maritime business. Some firms still do not hide their kinship with global maritime structures, while others are direct branches of Russian oil concerns.
The latter category includes sanctioned “Gazpromneft Shipping” LLC from St. Petersburg, tax number 7805480017, another St. Petersburg LLC “Transpetrochart”, tax number 7825484443, and Moscow LLC “Transneft-Service”, tax number 7710940202 with a branch in Krasnodar.
But other companies often unite their own shipping activities and hiring crews for tankers, while they combine the forced publicity of their own seafarer employment services with careful concealment of their own beneficiaries and names, and indeed their role in the system of the Kremlin’s oil imperialism.
Of course, these firms do not have any public statements about their connections with the global maritime business, and therefore the real place of these structures in the work of the “shadow” Russian fleet deserves special attention.
In this dimension, the activities of “BF Tanker” LLC (ООО “БФ Танкер”), tax number 7838503686, as a company that emerged in April 2014 and still uses the name “Balt Fleet Tanker” also, with the corresponding commercial brand, as well as its own number in the International Maritime Organization, IMO 4206557, are noteworthy.
This company, with an authorized capital of 49.8 million rubles, registered in St. Petersburg with a branch in Moscow, claims to be a key carrier of oil and oil products from the ports of the Baltic Sea along the inland waterways of Russia, including Moscow and Yaroslavl and other Russian “logistics centers”, for which it uses both its own and “extraneous fleet under the Russian flag”. It is noteworthy that the company declares the presence of two licenses, namely for the transportation of dangerous goods by inland waterway and sea transport and for the corresponding loading and unloading activities.
“BF Tanker” does not declare licenses for the employment of seafarers, but it actively carries out crewing activities, posts contacts of its own personnel recruitment operators on social networks, and there are numerous vacancies on the relevant specialized resources, supposedly for the company’s vessels.
For example, in January 2025, a vacancy was announced on online platforms by “BF Tanker” for a watch sailor on a tanker with a sailing area in the Black, Azov, and Mediterranean seas, while the candidate’s previous professional experience was not even required as mandatory. Russian seaferers write in relevant maritime chats about “sad” and “unpleasant moments” with wages on “BF Tanker” vessels, noting the “low wages”, and noting also that “the white part of the salary is small.”
Indeed, in 2022, the company offered an income of up to 200 thousand rubles for a senior assistant captain, which at the then exchange rate was no more than 2,200 dollars, and this clearly does not correspond to a similar position in the global market.
It is obvious that the tankers of this structure are mainly filled by candidates who do not correspond for more commercially attractive offers, including such “sea wolves” who are unqualified or have no experience, and they will complain about working conditions and wages in the future on social networks only.
The company’s tankers really actively serve not only and not so much Baltic transportation as the Black Sea ports of the Russians, and therefore it is obvious that they are clearly not limited to the “inland waterways”, declared by the company.
For example, in April 2023 alone, crude oil and petroleum products were transported from Russian ports on the Black and Azov Seas by nine tankers, whose owner and shipowner was declared to be “BF Tanker”, under the Russian flag with an average tonnage of up to 8 thousand tons each.
Among other things, “Balt Flot 11” IMO number 9804239 and “Balt Flot 12” IMO number 9804241 were transporting oil products from Taganrog to Samsun, Turkey, “Balt Flot 14” IMO number 9804215 was making a similar voyage from the port of Kavkaz to Limassol, Turkey, “Balt Flot 15” IMO number 9804227 from Azov to Alexandria, Egypt, “Balt Flot 16” IMO number 9829069 from Temryuk to Toros, Turkey, “Balt Flot 17” IMO number 9829071 from Rostov-on-Don to Yalova, Turkey, “Balt Flot 18” IMO number 9838199 from the port of Kavkaz to Iskenderun, Turkey, “Balt Flot 19” IMO number 9838204 from the port of Kavkaz to Turkish Toros, and “Balt Flot 20” IMO number 9846237 from Azov to Egyptian Damietta.
In the summer of 2025, “Balt Flot 11”, which was renamed without changing its flag to “Daria”, IMO number 9804239, entered the same Samsun and transported Russian oil both along the Black Sea and the Volga. Its current owner is hidden, but it is highly likely that it is the sanctioned Russian “Gosudarstvennaya transportnaya lysingovaya kompaniya” (“GTLK”, “State Transport Leasing Company”) from Salekhard, tax number 720261827. And “Balt Flot 12”, renamed as “Alexandra” with a probable owner of “AR Vector” JSC from St. Petersburg, created two years ago, tax number 9721201366, in August 2025 transported oil from Volgograd to the Sea of Azov.
At the same time, a group of similar tankers under the flag of the aggressor, and supervised, like the tankers described above, by the “Russian Maritime Register of Shipping”, is still owned by “BF Tanker”.
An example is “Balt Flot 1” with IMO number 9751872, which operated in Russian ports of the Baltic in the summer of 2025, and “Balt Flot 2” with IMO number 9751884, which in August 2025 returned to Russian inland waterways after a completely illegal call at the Ukrainian Azov port of Mariupol, captured by Russia.
“Balt Flot 3” IMO number 9751896 on the same dates transported Russian oil from Rostov-on-Don to the Black Sea, a similar voyage was carried out by “Balt Flot 6” IMO number 9751937, the same transportation from Azov was also carried out by “Balt Flot 4” IMO number 9751913, and their sister ship “Balt Flot 5” IMO number 9751925 was returning from Azov to Volgograd at this time.
In this regard, we will add that in various sources the ISM manager for the six tankers “BF Tanker” described was declared to be the company “Inok TM” LTD, to which we will return later. In the meantime, let us add that in 2021, the aforementioned tanker “Balt Flot 11”, then operated by “BF Tanker”, entered the port of Burgas, where it carried out installation work on a ballast water treatment system worth 374 thousand euros.
We should add that the main recipient of Russian oil in Bulgaria at that time was the “Lukoil Neftochim Burgas” plant, which subsequently caused an appropriate sanction response. In this regard, it is not surprising that since 2022, the managers and founders of “BF Tanker” have been hidden in the “official Russian registers”, and the website of the company, which back in 2019 ordered advertising photo shoots of “tanker crews arctities”, is not working.
However, we managed to find out that the founder of “BF Tanker” is currently the Moscow-based “Global Group” JSC, established at the end of 2022, tax number 9722032449, with the director in the form of Murmansk resident Irina Galkova. The holder of the register of shareholders for “Global Group” is JSC “VTB Registrator”, tax code 5610083568, which operates from the relevant sanctioned Russian “VTB” bank.
The current CEO of “BF Tanker” is being hidden as carefully as possible, but after the company was founded, he was an obvious “pure nominal” Dmitry Olersky, however, since June 2018, this position has been taken by the company’s former chief accountant Evgenia Putraym, whose father, Alexander Putraym, by “coincidence”, was the head of the Marine Management Systems Department of the same “Russian Maritime Register of Shipping”.
The role of Igor Furman as the head of the personnel service of “BF Tanker”, and Sergey Barchukov as the technical director of “BF Tanker”, was also recorded, while previously Barchukov was the assistant general director for technical operations of the tanker fleet in the same above mentioned LLC “Inok TM” (ООО “Инок ТМ”) from St. Petersburg, tax code 7841458962.
Among other things, Evgenia Putraym periodically “surfaced” in the Russian regional press during the acceptance of newly built tankers at shipyards, the construction of which under the RST-27 project “BF Tanker” ordered from the structure “Okskaya Sudoverf” JSC (Shipyard “OKA”) located in Navashino town on the Oka River.
That is why the role of the Russian classifier in these processes is key, and the “family contract” of the father and daughter Putraym clearly allowed them to “turn a blind eye” to many things, both in terms of technical and financial issues.
It is noteworthy that the construction of tankers for “BF Tanker” in Navashino, as well as, for the project, RST-54 at the “Krasnoye Sormovo” plant, took place under a contract with “Lukoil” for the transportation of oil products of this oil corporation, which as of 2016 transported up to a million tons of oil products annually on vessels of “BF Tanker”. It was on these global contracts that Sergey Chaplygin, then chairman of the board of directors of “BF Tanker”, who had been the general director of Litasco SA since 2010 before the formation of this structure, promoted himself ten years ago.
This subsidiary of the same “Lukoil” was an oil trader registered in Switzerland, which was then “reincarnated” in Dubai in the form of “Litasco Middle East DMCC”, where it received British sanctions in July 2025.
Thus, not only trade routes and long-term contracts, but also personnel issues closely link “BF Tanker” with “Lukoil”, and therefore it is not surprising that the same Chaplygin recently “emerged” in Russian glossy publications as the owner of exclusive apartments on the 42nd floor of “Moscow City” towers, the traditional “nest” of many Russian tycoons.
But the most interesting thing in the whole story with the owners of “BF Tanker” is the mention of this company, with its IMO number 4206557, in the European Commission’s Implementing decision 2024/411 of January 30, 2024. But this is not about another sanctions list, as one might logically imagine, but about a list of shipping companies in the context of the “maritime transport emissions within the system for greenhouse gas emission allowance trading”, in implementation of the European Union Directive 2003/87/EC.
As stated in decision 2024/411, “one Member State to be responsible for each shipping company” indicated in the relevant lists, and for “BF Tanker”, as it turns out, the relevant responsible EU state is Estonia. What exactly are the connections between this corporation, which is part of the Russian “shadow” tanker fleet, and the Estonian beneficiaries, is not clear from any open sources, but obvious explanations of the situation should undoubtedly be provided by Estonian officials.
Even more interesting is the activity of the above-described LLC “Inok TM”, about which Russian sailors themselves write in chats discussing employment on tankers “BF Tanker”: “this office is supervised by “Inok”, who has, let’s say, bad reviews”. As it is not difficult to guess, in the “official registers” of Russia, the directors and founders for “Inok TM” are hidden just as deeply as for “BF Tanker”.
However, from some sources it was still possible to find out that the general director for “Inok TM” at least recently was Igor Fomin, and the founders were Rishat Bagautdinov and Olga Grishchenko. At the same time, “Inok TM” is the legal successor of LLC “Inok Karelia Company”, the founders of which from 2016 to 2019 alternated with the same Bagautdinov, as well as Vladimir Kasyanenko, Anatoly Belozerov, Viktor Olersky and Boris Vasiliev.
But the most interesting thing is that in 2017, a Cypriot offshore company, the same “Voje Holding Limited”, registration number ΗΕ 220195, with an address in Nicosia, where individual companies from the “Panama Papers” were noted, and a mention, among these co-owners of “Inok Karelia Company”, a Belgian limited liability company “Inok” with an Antwerp address, “emerged” in this line of co-founders.
In open sources, at this address Verbindingsdok Oostkaai 5-7, 2000 Antwerp, Belgium, there really is a shipping management company “INOK NV”, IMO number 1858497, and its website listed on local aggregators “by a strange coincidence” redirects the visitor to the website of the Russian LLC “Inok TM”.
At the same time, “Inok TM” itself is mentioned on some Russian resources as “Inok N.V.” and at the same time the structure “Inok TM Ltd.” with the IMO number 4032143 is listed, together with “BF Tanker”, in the same European Commission Implementing Decision 2024/411 of 2024; the only difference is that responsibility for the activities of “Inok TM” lies not with Estonia, but with Latvia. This IMO number of Russian LLC “Inok TM” is confirmed by the information of the same “Russian Maritime Register of Shipping”, where this company is certified and its internal number is 37164.
In this respect, the activity of the aforementioned offshore company “Voje Holding Limited” in court cases regarding “floating crane, tugboat and barge lease agreements” in the courts of England and Ireland against sanctioned structures “GTLK Malta Four Ltd” and “GTLK Europe DAC”, associated with Russian authorities in the shipping sector, is no longer surprising.
These cases, for example, the current English CL-2024-000583, have become a typical attempt to circumvent sanctions through the formation of artificial commercial disputes, since both “Voje Holding Ltd” and its Cypriot “sisters” “Pola Maritime Ltd”, “Capstans Holding Ltd” and “Valbridge Ltd” have the same beneficiaries as the sanctioned “GTLK”.
At the same time, these companies are trying, through artificial lawsuits initiated by them, to portray themselves as “opponents” in order to transfer sanctioned property from one owner to another, in particular, using retroactively executed “lease agreements” on which “property claims” and the like are based.
This practice is not new for the Russians; it is enough to point to the Russians’ attempt to remove the tanker “Mekhanik Pogodin” IMO number 9598397 from its detention in Kherson by the Ukrainian authorities in 2018 due to the fact that its owner, the Russian company “VEB Leasing”, was on the national sanctions list. Then, case 2140/1776/18 was organized in the Kherson court by the Russian LLC “V.F. Tanker”, which claimed the alleged “transfer of ownership” of the vessel after its detention, from the sanctioned enterprise to a “clean” one.
But in the described situation, what is interesting is not so much the legal subtleties, but the person to whom too many threads converge. This is the same Rishat Bagautdinov, deputy chairman of the board of the Russian Chamber of Shipping, who not only “marked himself” in “Inok TM” together with the Cypriot “Voje Holding Ltd”, but was at the same time the chairman of the board of directors of the same “creative Kherson plaintiff” “V.F. Tanker”, and at the same time – the chairman of the board of directors of the same JSC “Okskaya Sudoverf”, where “BF Tanker” built its ships.
But now “V.F. Tanker” has become a part of the Cypriot structure “Volgo-Balt Transport Holding”, number HE 142614, which has the same registration address in Nicosia as “Voje Holding Ltd”, and in turn “Volgo-Balt Transport Holding” is an element of the Amsterdam-registered international transport group “Universal Cargo Logistics Holding” of the Russian oligarch Vladimir Lisin, who is only beginning to fall into certain sanctions lists and at the same time owns the same JSC “Okskaya Sudoverf”.
In this regard, we would like to add that JSC “Volga Shipping” (JSC “Sudokhodnaya kompanyya “Volzhskoe parokhodstvo”” or JSC “Volga-Flot”), tax number 5260902190, with director Pavel Vinogradov, which has been associated with Rishat Bagautdinov since 2001, was included in the sanctions lists of the European Union, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland in April-June 2025.
This structure from Nizhny Novgorod remains the founder of the aforementioned “V.F. Tanker”, as well as, since 2017, the company of the same Rishat Bagautdinov LLC “Vodokhod”, tax number 7707511820. This company is notable not so much for its declared profile in conducting river cruises, but for laundering tens of millions of budget funds on this, providing various institutions of the aggressor with all kinds of programs of a “patriotic orientation”, that is, becoming part of Russian imperialist propaganda.
JSC “Volga Shipping” is also related to the employment of Russian sailors, including on tanker vessels, since, among other things, it is the founder of the structure “Educational and Training Center for Maritime Training” (“Uchebno-trenazhernyy tsentr morskoy podhotovky”).
At the same time, sanctions pressure on the structures responsible for supplying Russian sailors to the ships of the “shadow” fleet is quite effective, an example of which is the fate of another company from Nizhny Novgorod, namely “Volga Crewing”, tax number 5260355861 with director Yulia Safonova.
This company was included in the sanctions lists in 2017 and now there is no information about its vacancies on ships in open sources, and in the registers of the aggressor the corresponding structure shows “no profits.” Thus, the sanctions impact on the relevant Russian structures in the tanker fleet sector becomes effective, and it should be extended to the participants in the Russian oil business described above.
Thus, the analysis of the work of the crews of Russian tankers and those companies that are engaged in their recruitment and at the same time shipping indicates the close growth of all private beneficiaries of the Russian “shadow” fleet among themselves, and at the same time their systematic growth not only into the Cypriot offshores, but also into the corridors of the maritime administrations of a number of European countries, their “creative” attempts to circumvent sanctions in courts.
A special role in this is played by the “Russian Maritime Register of Shipping”, which permeates the activities of the Russian “shadow” tanker fleet, from the laying of new vessels at the Oka and Volga shipyards to the certification of crewing companies that service Russian tankers. The sanctions policy of civilized jurisdictions should pay attention not only to large-tonnage tankers transporting Russian oil, but also to Russian companies of the “small” tanker fleet: as the above demonstrates, their destructive impact not only on maritime security, but also on European maritime policy is sometimes much greater.