In the two years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the number of ships classified as shadow or dark has leapt, and Western service providers have pulled back from working with a significant tranche of the merchant fleet for fear of being hit by sanctions.
However, the total amount of ships classified by members of the International Association of Classification Societies (IACS) has only slipped two percentage points in the intervening period to 50% of the total fleet. The reason? Put simply, the Indian Register of Shipping (IRClass).
The Arun Sharma-led IACS member has seen its fleet more than double in the two years of war. Data from Clarksons Research shows that in January 2022, a month prior to the invasion, the IRClass fleet stood at 11.4m gt, a figure that has since grown by 117.5% to stand at 24.8m gt today.
Hitherto unheard-of classification societies and flag states have leapt to prominence in the past couple of years, greasing Moscow’s export channels.
Gabon, a small Central African nation on the Atlantic coast, for instance, was last year’s fastest-growing shipping registry, a growth trajectory that has been massively boosted in the opening weeks of 2024 with the reflagging of a swathe of the Sovcomflot fleet.
Data from Clarksons Research shows that in the two years since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the Gabon flag has grown by an unprecedented 675%, to 6.2m gt, becoming the second largest registry in Africa, after Liberia.