Ukraine strikes Russia’s shadow fleet amid ongoing attacks, 11 killed

Russian missile and drone strikes killed at least 11 people and injured 96 others across Ukraine on September 11-12, with the Odesa region absorbing the worst of the barrage. Among the dead: a five-month-old infant, killed when a multi-story residential building took a direct hit. The attacks came as Ukraine ramps up its own offensive campaign against Russia’s shadow fleet, the aging armada of tankers Moscow uses to move oil while dodging international sanctions. That campaign, dubbed Operation MoLoChKa, has hit 285 vessels since launching on July 6. The war at sea and the war on civilians are feeding off each other, and the consequences are spilling into global energy and grain markets. A shadow fleet under fire Operation MoLoChKa has been busy. In its first ten weeks, Ukrainian forces struck 285 vessels linked to Russia’s shadow fleet across the Sea of Azov and Black Sea. July alone accounted for 215 of those hits. The shadow fleet itself is a sanctions-evasion apparatus. These are typically older tankers that operate without standard GPS tracking, allowing Russian crude to reach buyers who would otherwise be barred from purchasing it under Western price caps and embargo regimes....