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Exclusive: We discovered what's going on inside Russia's shadow fleet
Russia

Exclusive: We discovered what's going on inside Russia's shadow fleet

by Tanya Kozyreva

The vessels are old, their hulls streaked with rust, and their ownership obscured behind layers of shell companies. Yet the tankers that make up Russia’s so-called shadow fleet, the armada used to move sanctioned oil across the globe, are kept running with modern Western technology including Starlink, an investigation by the Kyiv Independent can reveal. To gain an insight into how the shadow fleet operates, the Kyiv Independent spoke to two Ukrainian sailors who claim they unwittingly became p

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Europe's centralized grid remains its vulnerability

Ukraine has now survived four winters of systematic Russian strikes on its energy infrastructure. This past winter was especially challenging. The United Nations documented near-daily strikes on energy infrastructure across 17 regions in January alone. In Kyiv, repeated attacks on two combined heat and power plants cut central heating to nearly 6,000 residential buildings each time. All 15 of Ukraine's thermal power plants have now been damaged or destroyed. Yet Ukraine managed to adapt — and

 Darnytska combined heat and power plant damaged by Russian airstrikes in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Feb. 4, 2026.

Ukraine war latest: An-26 crash in occupied Crimea kills Russian general, BBC reports

Key developments on April 2: * An-26 crash in occupied Crimea kills Russian general, BBC reports * Lviv Customs inspector suspected in killing of enlistment officer, police say * Russia's Gazprom claims Ukrainian strikes on TurkStream pipeline * Melania Trump helps return of 7 Ukrainian children taken by Russia Russian Lieutenant-General Aleksandr Otroshchenko was one of those aboard the An-26 transport plane that crashed in Russian-occupied Crimea on March 31, BBC's Russian Service report

About Russia

The Kyiv Independent’s coverage of news on Russia. Spanning eleven time zones across Eastern Europe and Asia, Russia has an estimated population of 146 million people. Russia’s capital city is Moscow, which is home to almost one in 10 Russians. Russia’s official currency is the Russian Ruble.

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