According to the analysis of maritime analytics company Kpler, the number of sanctioned ships has steadily increased over the last 5 years. The figure, which was around 350 in September 2020, rose to 1,700 by September 2025. The overlap between the various administrations sanctioning ships also finally began to increase, with notably better coordination between the United Kingdom and the EU.
Kpler data shows that the rate of increase of sanctions has slowed markedly and will decline to only 1-2% monthly by the end of 2025.
As a result, the sanctions list is now large but not expanding rapidly. Kpler states that this means compliance teams need to change their screening focus.
In a new report, Dimitris Ampatzidis, a risk and compliance analyst at Kpler, stated, “Rather than expecting continuous large increases, the focus at this stage should be on tracking historical alias changes and analyzing travel behaviors, which provide more information about risk than the headline growth figures.”
TankerTrackers also publishes a publicly available list of sanctioned tankers. The list, which increased by 69 ships in the last two months, now contains the names and details of 1,271 tankers.
According to documents accessed by Bloomberg, the EU is preparing to sanction three firms for providing fake flag registrations to tankers in Russia’s shadow fleet. These entities are alleged to have provided fake flags from jurisdictions such as Aruba, Curaçao, and Sint Maarten, with at least 8 sanctioned Russian tankers using these flags to conceal their ownership and evade sanctions.
These companies are part of the EU’s 19th sanctions package. This step aims to close registration loopholes that allow ships to evade sanctions. Many of these vessels claim to be linked to registry offices that do not operate them, or the registries deny the tankers’ registration in open-source research.
A Venn diagram recently created by Robin Brooks, a senior researcher at the Brookings Institution, shows a sharp increase in the overlap of sanctions. The number of ships jointly sanctioned by the UK and the US has risen from just five to 65 in recent months, while the number of ships jointly sanctioned by the UK, the EU, and the US has increased to 132. The EU and the UK currently jointly sanction 247 ships, which is by far the largest overlap. In contrast, the US independently sanctions only 17 ships, highlighting what Brooks described on Substack as Washington’s “withdrawal from leadership on maritime sanctions.”
Analysts warn that although Europe’s gains in coordination are impressive, the re-engagement of the US is crucial because American sanctions have a much greater global enforcement power.
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