A cluster of seven sanctioned Russian tankers deliberately falsified their Automatic Identification System positions to hide voyages to Novorossiysk, a report published by sources said on 5 November 2026.
Over a 90 day period the vessels routinely transmitted signals claiming they were drifting off the Black Sea close to the Bosphorus entrance, even as tracking by the analytics firm Windward showed them en route to Novorossiysk, the report said.
The behaviour is described as deliberate manipulation of AIS, the automatic ship-tracking system used by authorities and commercial operators. The false positions gave the appearance that the tankers were stationary and distant from their true courses.
Windward’s analysis is cited in the reports item as the means by which the vessels were identified while allegedly concealing their actual movements. The report frames the seven vessels as a coherent cluster engaging in the same pattern over the same window of time.
Officials and industry observers have previously warned that spoofing and other forms of data manipulation can be used to frustrate sanctions enforcement and hide sanctioned activity, and the recent cluster adds to those concerns. The report links the pattern to sanctioned Russian tonnage.
Tactics observed
According to the published account, the apparent tactic was to transmit positions showing the tankers drifting near the entrance to the Bosphorus, which would place them on the fringes of the Black Sea. That false signal pattern repeated across multiple voyages during the 90 day period covered by the report.
Windward is reported as having identified the difference between the signals being broadcast and the vessels’ actual movements, concluding that the ships were clandestinely proceeding to Novorossiysk rather than remaining near the strait as their AIS feeds suggested.
Detection and enforcement challenges
The reports item highlights the practical difficulty of policing maritime movements when signals cannot be taken at face value. Data providers and enforcement agencies rely on AIS for a wide range of monitoring tasks, and intentional spoofing diminishes that reliability.
The report implies that combining AIS feeds with independent analytic techniques was necessary to reveal the true voyages, and it says Windward supplied that independent analysis. The unfolding pattern of repeated spoofing across several vessels is presented as the substantive finding of the published piece.
The article does not offer details on the identities of the seven tankers, the cargoes involved or the specific sanctions applied, beyond describing the vessels as sanctioned and the destination as Novorossiysk. reports is the publisher of the report dated 5 November 2026.
Investigations of this kind are likely to prompt calls for strengthened verification of vessel positions and for greater use of complementary sources such as satellite imagery, port records and commercial intelligence. The published account makes plain that where AIS is intentionally manipulated, detection depends on cross-checking with other analytic methods.
The episode adds to a series of recent media accounts that record sophisticated attempts to obscure vessel identity or movements. The report, citing Windward’s analysis, places these seven vessels at the centre of such activity over the most recent 90 day window at the time of publication.