South Korea Shipped 176,000 Tonnes of Fuel to Russia on Sanctioned Tankers This Summer, Guardian Investigation Finds

South Korea backs Ukraine in public. Its ports tell a different story.

An investigation by The Guardian, published October 6, found that more than 176,000 tonnes of fuel, mostly diesel, left South Korean ports for Russia's far east in July and August. Seven tankers made 14 voyages. Three of them, the Layla, the Astoria and the Chongchon, were already under UK and EU sanctions when they loaded.

One of those tankers never even touched a South Korean port terminal. The Chongchon took on roughly 26,000 tonnes of fuel from an unsanctioned vessel, the Celeste I, during a ship-to-ship transfer off the port of Yeosu. That maneuver makes it harder to trace where cargo originated and lets sanctioned ships dodge the paper trail that comes with docking.

The biggest single carrier was the Layla. It ran two trips from Ulsan to Vladivostok, hauling 57,000 tonnes of diesel combined. On its first run in July it told South Korean authorities it was headed to Vladivostok, straight up. On the second, in August, it declared Niigata, Japan as its destination and sailed to Vladivostok anyway.

The Astoria, Russian-flagged and also sanctioned by Australia, pulled the same trick: told Ulsan port authorities it was bound for Japan on August 1, then turned toward Vladivostok with nearly 11,000 tonnes of fuel aboard.

None of this appears to break South Korean law. Isaac Levi, an analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, called it "shocking" that EU-sanctioned tankers loaded fuel at South Korean ports and said it "undermines the sanctions regime and South Korea's support for Ukraine." South Korea's own restrictions on Russia are built around export controls on machinery, electronics and vehicles. Fuel isn't on that list.

Seoul's position, per a statement to The Guardian, is that it's "a responsible member of the international community" supporting "international efforts to help end the war in Ukraine." South Korea has sent Ukraine humanitarian aid, non-lethal gear like body armor and demining vehicles, and pledged $2.3 billion in mostly loan-based support back in 2023. It has also consistently refused to send weapons, consistent with its longstanding policy of not arming either side in active wars.

But legal and defensible isn't the same as helpful to the sanctions coalition. If South Korean fuel is landing in the tanks of Russian buyers like Rosneft and NNK, both under Western sanctions according to Kpler data cited by The Guardian, then Seoul's export-control gap is doing real work for Moscow whether or not any statute gets broken.

Why Russia Needs the Fuel

Ukraine's military has been hammering Russian refineries for over a year, and it's working. Ukraine's Defense Ministry said on October 4 that more than 51% of Russia's oil refining capacity has been knocked offline. The International Energy Agency has reported Russian refinery throughput hit its lowest point in two decades back in June, with diesel output down nearly 30% year over year.

That refining collapse forced Russia to import 368,000 tonnes of oil products by sea in August, per Kpler data, more than seven times the prior month's total and the highest since the 2022 invasion. South Korea supplied 112,000 tonnes of that, about 31%, second only to India. Ukraine is winning the drone war against Russian refineries, and South Korean fuel is partially filling the hole.

A Side Dispute That Isn't the Same Story

Seoul and Kyiv are in a real diplomatic spat right now. President Volodymyr Zelensky disclosed details of a secret transfer of two North Korean POWs to South Korea during a September 23 U.N. speech, which Seoul says was supposed to stay quiet. South Korean President Lee Jae Myung warned on October 2 of "additional measures" against Ukraine if Kyiv doesn't take responsibility for the fallout. That dispute and the fuel shipments are two different threads. No source ties the POW disclosure to the timing or scale of the fuel trade, and readers should treat them as parallel, not causally linked.

One notable wrinkle in the coverage: Kyiv Independent's October 6 writeup described the tankers as making "14 voyages from the nation's far-eastern ports to South Korean ports, where they were loaded with fuel before returning," which reverses the actual route documented by The Guardian and every other outlet in this cycle. The tankers loaded in South Korea and sailed to Russia's far east, not the other way around.

What's still unknown: who actually owned or sold the fuel. South Korean port records don't disclose buyers or sellers, and the owners and managers of the four named tankers didn't respond to requests for comment from The Guardian. No South Korean investigation into the shipments has been announced.