The French navy intercepted a new tanker suspected of being part of the Russian “ghost fleet” on Tuesday June 23 in the central Mediterranean, Paris displaying its determination to prevent Russia from circumventing the economic sanctions taken due to the war in Ukraine. “The French Navy boarded the tanker Deliver on Tuesday while it was transiting off the coast of Sicily in violation of the law of the sea,” President Macron wrote on the social network X.
The French Navy boarded the tanker Deliver on Tuesday while it was transiting off the coast of Sicily in violation of the law of the sea.
This new action against the ghost fleet, carried out a few days after a similar operation by the United Kingdom… pic.twitter.com/5Gjn43MhLr
— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) June 25, 2026
I manage my choices I authorize
This is the fifth tanker suspected of being part of this ghost fleet boarded by France since September 2025. “We will not let the ghost fleet circumvent sanctions and finance the Russian war effort,” he continued. “Europe is determined. It will continue all necessary efforts to increase the cost of the war for Russia and enable the advent of a robust and lasting peace in Ukraine,” he adds.
The president posted a video showing the intervention of commandos airlifted aboard the ship. The Deliver flew “a Cameroonian flag” and was sailing “from Primorsk in Russia,” said the Mediterranean prefecture.
The French control operation, “carried out on the basis of article 110 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (…) aimed to verify the nationality of the vessel suspected of flying a false flag”, continued the maritime prefecture in a press release. “The examination of the documents confirmed the doubts as to the regularity of the flag displayed. A report was made to the Marseille prosecutor, competent under the maritime court, who requested that the ship be diverted.
The Deliver is therefore “currently escorted by Navy assets to an anchorage point for continued checks”. The two previous oil tankers from the Russian ghost fleet intercepted in the Mediterranean had been escorted and then detained off the port of Fos-sur-Mer, near Marseille.
Fines
The interception of this tanker is the fifth of this type carried out by France after those of the Tagor on May 31 in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, the Deyna and the Grinch, stopped in the Mediterranean in March and January 2026 respectively, and that of the Boracay, boarded in September 2025 off the coast of Ouessant (Finistère).
The Tagor is still immobilized, while the Deyna, the Grinch and the Bocaray were blocked and then were able to leave, after payment of fines for the last two. The exact amount of the fines was not revealed, but Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot mentioned “several million euros” in the case of the Grinch.
France announced on April 8 that it wanted to double the penalties applicable to offenses of failure to flag and refusal to comply. “Stopping the Russian war economy means cutting off the circuits that finance the aggression against Ukraine,” Minister of the Armed Forces Catherine Vautrin underlined on the X network, welcoming this new operation.
During the last boarding of this type, that of the Tagor, Moscow denounced at the beginning of June an operation “bordering on international piracy”. Cameroon, for its part, strongly condemned the fraudulent use of its flag by Tagor.
A sign of European determination on this issue, British forces intercepted an oil tanker from the Russian ghost fleet on June 14 in the English Channel. The interception of the Deliver was also “carried out in close cooperation with the European operation Eunavfor Med Irini and with our allies including the United Kingdom”, according to the maritime prefecture.
