The publication called the vessels of the “shadow fleet” of the Russian Federation “rusty buckets” for their dilapidation. In this regard, a separate market for their disposal has appeared in the world, which is not always safe for people and the environment, the media writes.
The Eagle S vessel “met its end” in the Turkish port of Aliaga on the Aegean coast, journalists note. The 229-meter-long “infamous throughout the world” vessel is being dismantled by cranes – the front part of the vessel was on the shore, and the stern was afloat.
Politico emphasized that the 19-year-old Cook Islands-flagged tanker had been carrying sanctioned Russian oil since early 2023, and in 2024, “it damaged as many as five submarine cables in the Gulf of Finland,” after which it was detained by Finnish authorities.
According to the publication, ship recycling is also carried out in countries such as Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands, where strict safety rules for people and the environment apply, and in Turkey, where “things are going well.”
However, the majority of ships (the media writes about two-thirds) are scrapped in Southeast Asia, where such an industry leads to the deaths of workers, and ships are dismantled “on beaches, not in hermetically sealed factories” (the author mentions India, Pakistan and Bangladesh in this context).
The journalist notes that he suspected that the ships would simply be thrown into the sea by their owners, but it turned out that this did not happen because the owners wanted to make money “from the metal.”
