Ukrainian sailors use Telegram to avoid being tricked into smuggling oil to Russia
This story is original appear in Hakai Magazine and be a part of Climate table cooperation.
A new video appeared on the social network Telegram: footage of the smoking area on a large ship. Curtains were torn, lamps were broken, and ash and glass were scattered all over the floor. “This is how they drink on our ships,” a young Ukrainian deckhand said as he filmed the scene, which showed things thrown into the corner of the room. “I’m panicking.”
The Telegram administrator asked the deck staff if he could share the ship’s name. They change the ship’s name several times a year, responded Feliks Bondar, who did the main renaming for this story. “I don’t even know what name to tell you,” he wrote in Ukrainian. “Our ship was originally called eagleBut in Venezuela, we were Matador And after that Shoyo Maru.”
A series of similar messages have flooded the chat in recent months: stories of dangerously deteriorating ships, ship operators withholding wages, abandoned crews and changing ship owners ship names or manipulate their automatic identification system (AIS)—a global network that helps ships. recognize each other.
The Telegram group has more than 8,000 sailors. Some have just graduated from maritime university, others are experienced captains. All were attracted to the group by their desire to be safe at sea. By telling their stories and naming names—when possible—these sailors gathered information about troubled ships, detailing everything from ships with low-quality food to a ship whose crew often experienced delays in paying wages.
But in recent years, as more and more sailors I found myself unintentionally involved in the so-called shadow fleet — smuggling oil to Iran, Russia or other customers that have been hit by tough sanctions aimed at limiting their oil sales — social media networks whisper developed. As well as being a place to find a reputable employer, it also became something else: a way for seafarers to avoid helping the other side of the war.
Life as one Being a contract crew member has never been easy. Workers frequently jump from ship to ship, from contract to contract, and from country to country. But the rise of the shadow fleet – along with Russia’s war in Ukraine – poses a new kind of risk.
About a year and a half ago, in early 2023, Bondar searched the seafarers’ Telegram network after a particularly troublesome gig. Offered a job by a seafaring agency based in Ukraine, Bondar discovered that the name of his assigned ship had been painted over and the AIS was once again disconnected. A note above the device warns crew members not to turn it on.
After a six-month trip smuggling sanctioned oil to China, Bondar said the crew was informed that the next operation would begin in Koz’mino, Russia. Russia’s most recent invasion of Ukraine began while he was at sea and has been going on for more than four months. Bondar and other Ukrainians on the ship refused to smuggle Russian oil. The ship’s operator reportedly fired them all, abandoning them at the nearest port in China.
