How did Ukrainians end up sailing in Russia's shadow fleet?

16 Apr

Shortly after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, Elon Musk’s company SpaceX swept in to restore internet connectivity to areas that had been affected by Russian attacks. But SpaceX and its internet service, Starlink, have hardly remained indisputable forces for good in the war in Ukraine. Earlier this month, the Kyiv Independent revealed that a fleet of old, rusty ships has been transporting hundreds of millions of barrels of Russian oil… with Starlink’s help. Investigative journalist Tanya Kozyreva joins us to explain what her reporting uncovered about how Starlink is used by the Russian “shadow fleet” – and how Ukrainian sailors have found themselves onboard. We’re also joined by The Europeans’ resident Luxembourger, Nina Lamparski, to discuss a resurgence of bison in Europe and the imperiled fate of halloumi.

If this podcast gets you singing “more, more, more!”, we’d love to introduce you to our newsletter, GOOD WEEK BAD WEEK. Same groove, different format, every Friday in your inbox. 🎵How do you like it, how do you like it?

Inspiration Station:

JOIN OUR BOOK CLUB: We’re so excited to be partnering with our friends at the European Review of Books on a new audiobook club! Want to read along with us? We’ll be discussing our first pick, Vincenzo Latronico’s Perfection, on 14 May.

Other resources for this episode:

“From biodiversity to carbon capture: Saving bison from extinction has brought big benefits to Europe” – Euronews, 8 April 2026
“Foot-and-Mouth Disease - questions and answers” – European Commission
“Disease and division threaten Halloumi in latest Cyprus-Turkey spat” – Politico, 10 April 2026
Our 2021 episode about halloumi, “Cheese Diplomacy”
“Exclusive: We discovered what’s going on inside Russia’s shadow fleet” – Kyiv Independent, 1 April 2026

Producers

Katy Lee and Morgan Childs

Mixing and mastering

Wojciech Oleksiak

EDITORIAL ASSISTANCE

Katz Laszlo

Music

Jim Barne and Mariska Martina

D:
Hello and welcome to The Europeans podcast, the show that I think should come with a health warning because we are going to fill your ears with so many European stories that you'll need a doctor to syringe it all out by the end of the episode.

I'm Dominic Kraemer, I'm in Amsterdam and I'm joined this week by our favourite Luxembourgish journalist, Nina Lamparski, in the co-hosting seat. Hi Nina.

N:
Hi Dominic. You may notice that I'm sat against a background that might seem familiar because I have infiltrated Katy's house.

D:
I thought I recognised it. So Katy has a week off and instead you go to her house and record while she is sitting in another room.

N:
Making her work.

D:
Yeah, that's good. Quite right. And I believe it's just been your birthday. Happy birthday, Nina.

N:
Thank you so much. Yes, it has been this weekend. I had a little party to celebrate and good fun was had. Quite a few European nationalities in the house, and shoutout to the person who broke my fridge door. Always a sign of a good party. But yeah, I mean, more pressing things. I feel like we should talk about Orbán, Viktor Orbán.

D:
Yes, well, that election result could have been seen as a late birthday present for you because after 16 consecutive years in power and a four year stint before that, Viktor Orbán lost the election this weekend. Péter Magyar, the political upstart who came from Orbán's own political tradition, has defeated him in the most spectacular political win. His party, Tisza, is a pro-European centre-right party and it looks like they've just won a two-thirds majority in the Hungarian parliament, meaning that Magyar might actually be able to do some of the incredibly difficult work of unpicking Orbán's influence in basically all of Hungarian public life. The media, the judiciary. We'll have to wait and see how much of that he can do. But it's been an exciting few days, hasn't it, Nina?

N:
I mean, it's good news. I remember I actually covered Hungary extensively when I was a correspondent in the region and that was around the time of the migrant crisis. So I kind of saw the gradual crackdown of the government on NGO rights and the media and we ourselves really felt it, even just filming protests and our video journalists, for example, being arrested or being attacked because they were considered to be part of the demonstrators when we were just there to actually document what was happening. So yeah, it's really incredible to think that Orbán is now stepping down as such a close ally of Putin. So yeah, I think it's going to be really interesting to see what's going to happen in Hungary and how Hungary's place within the EU might change now.

D:
Yeah, it's a huge change for Hungary, even though, as I said, Magyar comes from Orbán's political tradition. So I mean, yeah, there's a lot to be seen how Magyar behaves politically. But just the fact that there is discontinuity is something that many Hungarians didn't believe would happen. It felt not too long ago that Fidesz was going to rule forever. And this is a nice reminder that, yeah, democracy does sometimes work.

N:
Will we ever see Putin leave, do you think?

D:
That's a good question.

N:
We won't answer that today.

D:
We will not. But I've really enjoyed watching the videos of celebration in the streets of Budapest. One Hungarian friend of me and my husband sent us a message on Sunday evening saying,
It's amazing what is happening in the streets. Cars are honking, people are dancing on the top of tram stations, everyone is hugging everyone.’ It just sounded like such an amazing moment of joy. And that word that I seem to have forgotten: hope?

N:
Yeah, that is actually you just made me think of a couple of friends, two women who used to live in Budapest and who ended up leaving because they were being openly attacked and, you know, spat out on the street. I mean, this was like quite a while ago now, but I think LGBTQ rights obviously also were part of the rights that were trampled on. So hopefully with these changes, we'll see sort of a bit more positivity and sort of people's spaces being respected again.

D:
It can be seen as a defeat for Putin, but also as a defeat for JD Vance, who really put his weight behind Orbán at the end of the campaign. And that didn't seem to work, did it?

N:
I didn't think it would. I think those who voted against Orbán also didn't particularly like Vance. I might be wrong, but that's kind of how it seemed to me. We're a bit sick of populist rhetoric at this point.

D:
Yeah, apparently. Anyway, there are other things happening in Europe this week, too, and that's why instead of doing a Good Week, Bad Week about Hungary, as people might expect… we're doing a Good Week, Bad Week about hooved animals. That's coming up in a bit. And later on in the show, Katy Lee will be popping by to join me for a conversation with the Ukrainian investigative journalist Tanya Kozyreva. We're going to be speaking to Tanya about her recently published investigation into Russia's shadow fleet, this clandestine network of ageing oil tankers and cargo ships that are run by Moscow in order to avoid Western sanctions. Her investigation revealed something quite striking, that the shadow fleet is being run with the help of the Starlink network. And Nina, who runs the Starlink network?

N:
It is my friend, my nemesis, my ever returning buddy, Elon Musk, of course.

D:
Absolutely. Well, because we promised that you wouldn't have to talk about Elon Musk on this episode of the show, because I think you've talked about him on every other single episode that you've appeared on, Katy is joining me for that interview.

N:
Excellent. It was my condition for coming back. I was like, no.

D:
It was.

N:
I feel like he's going to sue me soon if I keep doing this.

D:
Happy to protect you from more Elon chat this week. But for now, it's time for Good Week, Bad Week.

[MUSIC]

D:
Who has had a good week? So Dominic, believe it or not, instead of giant egomaniacs like Musk, I am bringing you giant animals. Because today's Good Week goes to the European bison, which has returned from the brink of extinction after disappearing from the wild 100 years ago.

D:
100 years ago. That is really amazing news.

N:
Almost a century. Yes.

D
Now, I think somewhere in the back of my brain, I remember we talked about bison many, many years ago on this podcast. But can you remind me, there's like, European bison are different to American bison, right?

N:
They are. Basically, the European bison is the more refined cousin. It's less hairy, slimmer, and of course, has longer legs.

D:
Of course.

N:
It also happens to be Europe's largest land mammal. And for thousands of years, big herds of these majestic beasts would roam across Europe from France to Russia, and from Sweden, all the way down to the Balkans.

D:
So what happened, if they were roaming all around Europe? Why did they disappear?

N:
As usual, humans did what humans do and hunted them down. And at the same time, we were also wiping out their natural habitats by cutting down forests and destroying grasslands to build roads and cities and, you know, everything else that was part of industrialisation, basically. So by the time the last wild bison was shot in 1927, so almost a century ago, the species was already hanging on by a very thin thread.

D:
Wait a second. If you say the last one was killed, how are they back today? Is this like some amazing piece of modern technology?

N:
Well, luckily, Dominic, a handful had survived in zoos and on private estates in places like Poland, Germany and Russia. So this meant that an international breeding programme was already in place by the time that the last wild animal was killed. So you can't obviously think of this as like one very cohesive programme because people weren't able to communicate in the same way that they could today. But nonetheless, some of these efforts were actually paying off by the 1950s. And the first European wild bisons were released in a forest in Poland.

D:
In the 1950s already?

N:
Yes. So that was a huge milestone because it was one of the very first times that a large mammal, which had only been able to survive in captivity, was released back into the wild and survived there too.

D:
So like a really early example of European rewilding. So they were first released back in Poland, but like, have they moved beyond Poland? Like where might I come across a bison today?

N:
Well, as Euronews reported last week, you can now find them in Poland, Belarus and Russia, but also in other places like Germany, the UK, France, Romania, Bulgaria, Spain and even the Netherlands where you are.

D:
Sorry, are you saying there's bison in the Netherlands?

N:
Yes. You might not actually bump into them physically on your morning walk. But one of the main organisations that deals with saving them and other endangered species, Rewilding Europe, is based in the Netherlands. And according to them, there are now around 9,000 European bison roaming free. And that number has basically quadrupled over the last 10 years, which means that the species has now been downgraded from vulnerable to near threatened, which is still, you know, delicate, but it's a little bit of an improvement.

D:
Yeah. I mean, none of us want to be vulnerable, but near threatened – yeah, this is a really nice improvement. Finally, some good news. So we know they did it through breeding programmes, but can you tell me a bit more about how they worked?

N:
I'm glad you asked. So one of the key steps was something called the European bison pedigree book or stud book, as I like to call it, wink, wink, essentially a detailed record of every single animal.

D:
Stud book.

N:
It's just much easier to say than European bison pedigree book, because that is what it is, right? You have to find studs that can help procreate and that's what they've done. And so conservationists have tracked who was related to whom and carefully managed breeding to avoid well inbreeding.

D:
I love the idea of this book, the stud book being like a kind of old fashioned dating service. It's like, are you interested in this hairy, long legged European bison?

N:
Look at the legs, look at his long legs. But indeed, it's the kind of genetic bookkeeping that allowed the population to grow without collapsing again. However, the flip side is that unlike Tinder, the stud gene pool remains quite small. And so one solution to that problem has been to move bison across borders to different European countries, which is why we now find them in so many different areas. Moving across borders stops bison from becoming too closely related. And it also helps to start new herds in new places.

D:
Well, this all sounds very healthy, I guess. I really don't know anything about the European bison or what their day to day life looks like. So could you unleash your inner David Attenborough and tell me a bit of what a day in the life of a European bison would look like in 2026?

N:
I'll try and do that with David Attenborough's voice. Oh, I don't know what that was.

D:
It's a little bit Scottish.

N:
It's like a drunk Scot infiltrating this podcast. But yes, so of course, even though bison are back in the wild, they're not actually completely left to their own devices. As you can imagine, the world today is very different from when their ancestors roamed the wild plains of the Caucasus. So bison now move in much smaller herds in forests and mountains. But because Europe is so built up, they obviously can't just wander freely across the continent because you have roads and farms and borders, which means that a lot of herds are still cut off from each other. So they live quite isolated from each other. And also living in forests isn't actually that ideal, especially in winter when food becomes scarce. And then there's the fact that when they wander into farmland to graze because they're very hungry, they can run into people, which obviously scares people, even though bisons are beautiful. But if you've never seen one and you come nose to nose with one, it's quite a scary moment, I imagine. So to avoid this, some bison are actually kept in large reserves rather than being in fully open landscapes. But at the same time, groups like Rewilding Europe and others are trying to create more open, protected areas where bison can move around freely and rely a lot less on human support. And that is the idea over time is to reduce, obviously, the interference of humans, because we were also responsible for making them vanish in the first place, right?

D:
Yeah, get out of the way, humans. So, yeah, you mentioned the risk of bumping into a bison as a human, but what about bison interacting with other animals?

N:
It turns out that bison are not just beautiful, but they're actually really good for wildlife. So the story is no longer just about humans saving bison, but also about bison, in a way, saving the planet, because they are what's known as an ecosystem engineer. That is the official job description on LinkedIn. Which is a slightly grand way of saying that they change the landscape just by existing in it, which is fascinating. So they graze, they browse, they knock over trees, they strip bark, they create open spaces. Is this enough David Attenborough for you?

D:
Yes.

N:
This is what I witnessed hiding in the bushes of the Luxembourgish forest.

D:
I love it. I wish you had done some on-the-ground reporting for that. I'm sure you did do on-the-ground reporting for this Good Week, right?

N:
I was going to say, who says I didn't? Who says I didn't? I did. And so in doing so, and in doing all these different things, they basically create habitats that are more varied, and that in turn supports a wider range of other species.

D:
So basically, they're kind of like very chaotic gardeners.

N:
Yes, exactly. And we can already see tangible results of this in places like the UK, where reintroduced bison herds are helping to open up very dense woodland, allowing light back in and changing what grows on the forest floor. Also, scientists in Eastern Europe are looking at whether bison might actually play a role in carbon storage, not because they're directly absorbing carbon, but because they help restore ecosystems that do. Although this part is still really being investigated, so we cannot affirm yet that bisons are actually helping in the way carbon is being stored on the planet. But it's something that is being looked at, particularly in Romania. And because of all of this, the European bison is hailed as a flagship example of what's called successful rewilding. Because if you bring back a missing species, you can get more biodiversity, more resilience, and maybe even more carbon stored in the landscape. It's also good for nature-based tourism and supporting local communities.

D:
Nina, I've been doing this podcast for long enough to know that anything that sounds as good as this, there's always like a sting in the tail.

N:
Yes.

D:
What are you not telling me yet? What's the but?

N:
Your instincts are right, Dominic. As usual, sadly, there is a but. You will only get those benefits if the animals are protected, the land is connected, and there are no major conflicts, which isn't exactly the case in Europe right now, obviously. So the war in Ukraine, for instance, has made the bison recovery much harder. Some plans to move bison across borders had to be cancelled after the invasion in 2022 because it simply wasn't safe anymore for the conservation teams to continue their work. So that's one issue. And then another one is precisely the place where bison live right now. As I mentioned, they're mostly found in forests, not because it's ideal, but because it's where they survive and it's where they were reintroduced. In reality, bison naturally actually do better in open landscapes with plenty of grass. So they're surviving in habitats that aren't quite right for them, which makes them more dependent on humans and more likely to run into conflict when they go looking for food. So you can see how there's a bit of a spiral.

D:
Yeah, it's that old thing that every solution brings with it new problems.

N:
That's true. But the European bison is definitely a success story, not least because it shows what Europe can do when it actually works together, as we've hopefully seen from what I've told you. Saving the species is complex. It involves long-term breeding programmes, careful tracking of family lines, reintroducing animals into the wild, and a lot of different countries collaborating over several decades to rebuild the population. And this explains why the balance right now remains so delicate despite recent successes. And frankly, I think the French should also be added to the list of potential threats in this story.

D:
Oh.

N:
Yes. When I told a friend in Paris about the return of the European bison, you know what they said? “Oh, great. Where can we try it?”

D:
Oh, classic. That is outrageous.

N:
So yes, Dominic, the bison is back. We just have to make sure French chefs don't get their hands on them.

D:
Stay away, French chefs.

N:
All right. So after our beloved bison, who has had a bad week, Dominic?

D:
Well, before I tell you, I should say that this is the segment of the show that was produced in cooperation with our radio partners across Europe at Euranet Plus. And yeah, I'm sticking with the hooved animals. I am giving Bad Week, and actually a bad few months, to livestock on the island of Cyprus, where outbreaks of foot and mouth disease are creating a crisis situation for Cypriot farmers with thousands of livestock already culled. Things are made worse by the fact that the question of how to deal with this crisis is coming up against the difficulty in bridging the divide between the Turkish Cypriot North and the Greek Cypriot South.

And in a part of this news story that might affect all of the cheese lovers listening out there, the beloved Cypriot cheese halloumi, also known as hellim, may be under threat unless this nasty disease can be kept under control.

N:
Oh no, Dominic. This is terrible news because I really like halloumi, but I think you're also rather a fan of the cheese, no?

D:
I think ‘rather a fan’ is rather an understatement. Halloumi is my favourite food in the world.

N:
Are you made of halloumi?

D:
By now, at least like 5% of my sales are halloumi. I had a halloumi bar at my wedding. And actually one of my all time favourite episodes of this very podcast was about halloumi. It's an episode called Cheese Diplomacy, which looked at the effect of the European Commission giving halloumi this protected designation of origin label. Do you know what that is?

N:
Is that the same one that they give to, for example, champagne in France?

D:
Exactly. So it's a regulation that connects a locality to an item of food or drink. So in this case, it means that only cheese made in Cyprus, following various strict regulations, can be sold as halloumi. But yeah, that protected designation of origin means that we are dependent on those Cypriot livestock for the halloumi that we eat, which is great for the Cypriot economy. But now that there is this outbreak of foot and mouth on Cyprus, it makes the global halloumi supply somewhat vulnerable. If there ends up being a big disruption in the supply of the various milks that make halloumi, then Cyprus's halloumi production could hit a roadblock. Now, before everyone panics and starts like rushing to the store to buy all the packets of halloumi, and we've got a repeat of 2020 when the pandemic started and everyone was getting toilet roll, there is good news for fellow halloumi lovers, and more importantly, for the livelihood of Cyprus's halloumi producers. And that is that for now, halloumi exports have not been affected. And the Cypriot authorities stress that there is no risk to food safety. Halloumi is still safe to eat because the milk is heated to above 95 degrees Celsius during the production process. And anyway, humans cannot catch foot and mouth disease.

N:
That is a relief. Thank you. My heart was beating a lot faster there. I can calm down again now.

D:
So this is good. So it's safe for us, but there's still the animals that can be affected by it.

N:
Which animals can actually develop foot and mouth disease?

D:
Well, it's a disease of the hooved animals. I actually didn't check if bison could get it, but I think...

N:
Oh no, not the bison.

D:
Yeah, should I check that? I'm just going to check.

N:
Groundbreaking journalism.

D: Can bison… Bison can get foot and mouth disease.

N:
After all this, I still think that the French are more dangerous to the bison.

D:
I think you're definitely right. And yeah, it doesn't seem like there's any bison community on Cyprus. But the animals that we mostly talk about with foot and mouth disease are cows, but also sheep, goats and pigs. And halloumi is traditionally made from sheep and goat milk. But the European Commission in their regulations around the protected designation of origin, they have allowed some percentage of cow milk to be used if producers want to.

N:
Interesting. Okay, but what actual, what kind of effect does this disease have on these poor hooved animals?

D:
The disease causes a high fever. It can be fatal. And yeah, the virus that causes it is highly infectious.

N:
Possibly a stupid question at this point, but I imagine it also does something to their actual feet and mouth or hooves.

D:
No, you're absolutely right. Not a stupid question. I should have said that. They get blisters and ulcers between the toes and on the hoof pads and in their mouths. Hence the name. And there was this enormous outbreak in the UK in 2001. I don't know if you remember it.

N:
Yes, absolutely.

D:
Yeah, it resulted in six million animals being slaughtered. So yeah, no one wants that to happen again. And therefore, there are these very strict European regulations in place to try to control and stop the spread of the disease quickly whenever it emerges. And over the past year and a bit, there has been a notable uptick in foot and mouth outbreaks in Europe, starting with Germany at a water buffalo farm in Brandenburg in January last year. There was also an outbreak in the border region of Hungary and Slovakia in March last year. Those outbreaks were both brought under control. But then in February of this year, multiple outbreaks were reported in Cyprus and a month later in Greece on the island of Lesbos.

N:
So is there like a patient zero in this story?

D:
Oh, good question. I actually don't know if there is a cow patient zero. But if you're really good at European geography, which I'm sure you are, Nina, you will know that Lesbos and Cyprus are actually not that close together. But the outbreaks are thought to be connected because they are both thought to have come from the country that both Lesbos and Cyprus are near, which is Turkey. Where they've been struggling with significant outbreaks of foot and mouth disease over the past few years. The disease is actually now endemic in Turkey. Endemic means that it regularly occurs in the area.

N:
Okay. So I imagine for Cyprus, this is obviously a massive concern, considering how important halloumi is to the economy. So how is the country going about keeping the disease from spreading further and causing serious harm to the local economy?

D:
Well, yeah, that's indeed the big question. And as I said already, the EU mandated rules are strict. They include quarantines, animal movement restrictions, disinfection protocols. And unfortunately, if just one animal in a herd is infected, the entire herd must be culled.

N:
That is so sad.

D:
Yeah, it's really heartbreaking. But it is the protocol and it's meant to avoid more animals being killed in the long run.

N
I mean, that happens with chickens as well, doesn't it? When you get like these… What's the chicken disease again?

D:
Bird flu.

N:
Thank you. David Attenborough has left the building at this point. It is just me again in the seat. But yeah, bird flu.

D:
Yeah, but it is controversial. And this is where things get complicated. Cyprus is a divided island split between the Turkish Cypriot North and the Greek Cypriot South with a United Nations run buffer zone in between. The EU officially recognises the whole island as part of the Republic of Cyprus, which is a member state of the EU. But the northern third operates as the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, a de facto state recognised only by Turkey. Are you still with me?

N:
I am, but I can see how complicated this must be in terms of efforts of culling the disease.

D:
Yeah, and whilst farmers across the entire island benefit from having the EU's protected designation of origin status, so cheese also from northern Cyprus can be exported as halloumi, there is an issue now because the Turkish Northern Cypriot authorities have decided to respond to this foot and mouth outbreak in a different way in northern Cyprus to what the EU outlines. So in northern Cyprus, they are not going down this broad culling route, but focussing their efforts on vaccinating instead.

N:
Interesting. Well, so does vaccination stop the spread more effectively than culling?

D:
Well, just for you, Nina, I dove really deep into this topic and I found myself on the European Commission's questions and answers page about foot and mouth. And according to that page, no, vaccination does not stop the spread of the disease. Livestock can still carry and pass on the virus after vaccination. It does, however, help to limit the clinical signs of the disease. The EU says that emergency vaccination can be used on infected livestock whilst they are waiting to be culled. This helps reduce how much the virus spreads from those infected animals to potentially others. And vaccination can also be used on high risk herds. So think of farms that are in a certain radius close to a confirmed outbreak. But the EU says vaccinating alone is not an option. Culling of entire herds where an infection has been found is still necessary, according to the EU.

N:
Thank God it's not the same for Covid.

D:
Oh, dark, Nina. Anyway, the disease is being managed in very different ways in the island. And according to some farmers who were quoted in an excellent article in Politico on this crisis, there seems to be fear from farmers across the entire island that the lack of a consistent approach is making it more likely that the outbreak will grow and that many more livestock will eventually have to be culled.

N:
That makes sense. I mean, if you don't have one cohesive strategy, I imagine, and especially if there are differing opinions about what actually works effectively, it makes sense that this would make them nervous. So from what you're saying by the sound of things, the worst could be yet to come for both the livestock and for us halloumi eaters. Is that right?

D:
Yeah, potentially. And what makes it worse is that according to that excellent article I just mentioned in Politico, Cypriot farmers were already struggling with a shortage of goats and sheep milk and were having to resort to making halloumi with more cow milk than they would like to in order to meet the booming demand from crazy Europeans like you and me, who would like to eat a halloumi for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Halloumi is actually now the second largest export product from Cyprus after mineral fuels and oils. Halloumi brought in…

N:
Sorry, just a lot less tasty.

D:
A lot. Halloumi brought in €345 million in revenues last year, overtaking exports of Cyprus's traditionally very strong pharmaceutical sector. So it's really important for Cyprus and its economy that the spread of this disease stops.

N:
Okay, so what is going to happen now? Is there a plan in place?

D:
Yeah, I don't really know, to be honest. It all seems rather messy. So far, since the outbreak started in February, 5.5% of the livestock population on Cyprus has been infected and over 30,000 animals have been culled. The Cypriot government actually asked the EU if they could suspend the culling of thousands of livestock in the south, seeing as it isn't happening in the north of the island anyway. And yeah, that request was rejected.

N:
I imagine that if I were a Greek Cypriot farmer and I saw northern farmers resisting the culling, not carrying out culling, I also would be quite resistant to doing this.

D:
Yeah, you can understand it. It's a big thing to kill your livestock, especially uninfected animals. But yeah, the EU's animal health commissioner, Olivér Várhelyi, did go to Cyprus about a month ago to assess the situation on the ground. And he said there will not be any relaxation on the rules around culling livestock. And about 10 days ago, the Cypriot authorities announced that a further five farms were infected, bringing the total infected sites up to 59. So yeah, maybe things will shift for the better soon. Let's hope that the outbreak calms down. But for now, it's been a bad few weeks for Cypriot livestock and for farmers in Cyprus. And we'll just have to wait and see how things develop. And also whether it's going to be an end to my halloumi habit if the supply does get reduced. Maybe that would actually be a good thing.

N:
I'm sure you have a secret stash somewhere. You probably have a bunker filled with some halloumi.

D:
For the coming apocalypse.

N:
Just in case.

[MUSIC]

D:
Time to get serious for a second. If you listened to the show last week, you will have heard our guest Dave Keating say some pretty punchy things about the state of Europe, summed up in the phrase, ‘Europe is fucked’. He also talked about problems that come from a lack of pan-European media. And I didn't butt in at the time. But I wanted to respond to that now to say, hey, we exist. We've existed for almost 10 years now. And more and more listeners join us every week. You could kind of look at this podcast as a success story for pan-European media, no?

N:
Absolutely, not just kind of, but a proper flagship success story, much like the bison reintroduction programme.

D:
Much like that, yeah. We've proven that there's an audience that wants to hear about Europe each week. We are demystifying European news. We are making people feel more connected across countries. But in another way, it can feel difficult to argue that we're a success story because we're still so vulnerable in terms of our business model and our finances. And that's why each week, we have to bore you with our needy attempts to try and convince you to help us out financially. I wish we didn't have to, but unfortunately, we still need your help. And you can help us out in various ways with a one-off donation by heading to our website europeanspodcast.eu or you can support us monthly on patreon.com/europeanspodcast. If you do the latter, you get various things in return from us, ranging from a postcard from me or Katy, a personal voice message from us both – it's a little bit like a super tiny mini episode just made for you – and you will also occasionally get access to behind-the-scenes content like a very funny blooper from Wojciech last week, getting frustrated trying to pronounce English words. And an extra question we put to Dave Keating in the interview last week, but we didn't have space for in the main show. So come along, join us, help us, please.

N:
Love us.

D:
Love us. Love me. Anyway, this week we have a lovely list of wonderful people to thank for supporting us. They are Jiri, Remy, Chris, Timothy and Nuno. Thank you all so much.

N:
Thank you.

[MUSIC]

D:
Time for an interview and Katy is back for this. Hello, Katy.

K:
Hello. I hear you and Nina have been having a good time.

D:
Yeah, you've been silently listening along, haven't you?

K:
Well, I live in quite a small flat, so yes.

D:
You just can't stay away. But anyway, I'm happy you're here. I'm always happy when you're around, even if it's silent.

K:
Aww.

D:
You've joined us now because we are about to have an interview about a piece of investigative reporting that was recently published in the Kyiv Independent. Here is how the journalist told us to say her name.

T:
It's Tanya Kozyreva, but you can mispronounce it as many times as you want.

K:
I love that.

D:
Tanya is a Ukrainian investigative reporter currently based in Washington, D.C. She's worked on major cross-border investigations, including the Pandora Papers. In a previous life, she worked at BuzzFeed News and investigated the business dealings of Trump's inner circle. But today we're here to talk about her most recent investigation, which is an investigation into Russia's fleet of old, rusty ships that are moving oil and gas around the world, despite the Russian oil and gas being under sanctions from many countries. The fact that this oil and gas is being moved around and sold is not news. We've known that for ages. But what is news and what Tanya uncovered is that these ships are using Starlink, the satellite internet constellation that is run by SpaceX, Elon Musk's company.

K:
That guy. I mean, I think what makes this news especially striking is the relationship between Starlink and Ukraine, right? Like Starlink was hailed as having paid a pretty heroic contribution to Ukraine's defence effort at the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. You know, this technology was allowing people to keep communicating, both the armed forces, but also ordinary Ukrainians. And now Tanya's reporting reveals that these Russian ships are using the exact same technology to coordinate the movement of Russian oil, with the profits helping to fuel Russia's war effort against Ukraine.

D:
Yeah, it's quite a cruel irony, you could say. And probably for that reason, this story has apparently made quite a splash in the Ukrainian media since it was published. But a lot of the rest of the world was busy with other things, and it didn't get much attention in the English-speaking media particularly, which is why we thought it was really important to talk about it this week.

K:
Well, there's been quite a lot of news headlines about how to move oil around, hasn't there, with all the focus on the Strait of Hormuz in recent weeks. Maybe everyone was already oversaturated with news about vessels moving oil around.

D:
I guess they were. Anyway, we spoke to Tanya from the US early on Monday morning to find out a bit more about her investigation.

D:
Hi Tanya, thanks so much for joining us at The Europeans today.

T:
Of course, happy to be with you.

D:
So at the heart of your latest investigation is something known as Russia's shadow fleet. What do people mean when they talk about shadow fleets?

T:
It's a lot of vessels that are rusty and old. The owners can be registered in one jurisdiction, the company which runs the ship is in the other jurisdiction. So it's a very complex system of moving sanctioned Russian oil around the globe. Something that helps Russia basically to avoid and evade sanctions and make money out of the oil during the full scale invasion of Ukraine.

D:
And how important is Russia's shadow fleet for its ability to be able to keep attacking Ukraine? Like, do we know roughly how much money Russia continues to make every year selling its oil in this way?

T:
I think it's a very fluid number. And it's, you know, oil prices are changing with the invasion in Iran. The oil prices spiked and the same happened with the invasion of Ukraine. It's just hard to calculate how much money Russia makes out of their oil production, but it's a very significant percentage of their revenue.

K:
So let's talk about your investigation and these old, creaky oil tankers. It turns out these tankers, despite being old and creaky, are kept running on cutting edge technology, notably Starlink, which is Elon Musk's satellite internet service. It is owned by SpaceX. These boats are often far out at sea. They are cloaked in mystery. How on earth do you, as an investigative reporter, go about figuring out how this fleet of boats is actually operating?

T:
Well, first of all, I noticed that there are news about a ship with the name Bella 1. I don't know if you followed this saga in the beginning of the year. One Russian ship was arrested near the coast of UK, but it was first noticed near Venezuela around the time of a special military operation conducted by the United States of America. For two weeks, US law enforcement were trying to get on the board of it, just to figure out why the captain refused to cooperate. So in the end, the ship was arrested. All the crew members were arrested. News surfaced about 17 Ukrainians on the board of the ship. And I was curious enough to start asking around, like how many Ukrainians are actually could be in the Russian shadow fleet. Surprisingly, I found out that very often Ukrainians are recruited through companies based in Ukraine, and they are recruited also through people they know. People are asking whether they want to join the crew. So without any details, or like, nobody is like advertising it like, oh, let's join the Russian shadow fleet. You know, for this reason, many Ukrainian crew members, they figured what is happening only by being in the open sea and sort of like spending sometimes months, sometimes years on the board of those ships. I just reached out to some of the sailors that were arrested and released off the Bella 1 vessel that I mentioned. So all together, it sort of gave me the perspective on how the Russian fleet operates, because like before that, we only knew in the theory what it is. It was sort of the first time when we could actually talk to the crew members so we could sort of piece it together.

D:
And do you believe these sailors that you spoke to when they say that they had no idea they were signing up to essentially help the Russian war effort?

T:
I do believe them just because like the ownership is hidden behind so many layers, right? Everybody tells me that only the captain of the ship and two or three more people actually know where the ship is heading. And only the captain can communicate with the owner of the ship. So other crew members are kind of clueless of what's going on. They're just like trying to make sure that this old ship is not sinking. And they were saying also that they value Ukrainians as crew members because Ukrainians know how to operate with this like super old, super rusty ships. And they're like hardworking people and not very picky about the salary, sort of desperate because of the war. And sometimes they're agreeing to not very transparent offers. But I believe that a lot of them, they would never agree to be a part of shadow fleet if they would know that those vessels are the part of the shadow fleet.

K:
I'm interested to hear more about this Starlink connection. What do we know about how these Russian boats are using Elon Musk's satellite internet service in the way that they operate?

T:
Most of the communication that is happening on the board with outside world is conducted through Starlink. And it's very easy to buy Starlink abroad. It's not easy to buy it in Ukraine. It's not easy to buy it in Russia. But if you want to order it in Bulgaria or anywhere else, nobody asks you how will you use your Starlink when they sell it to you, right? There is no limitation, unfortunately, on the use of this technology. Of course, probably Starlink know that their technology is used in the open sea. I mean, I hope that they read my story. I also requested their comments.

D:
But they didn't respond?

T:
No. And I also tagged Elon Musk in my tweet, but he also ignored it. So Elon Musk, if you are listening, please make sure that the Russian fleet has no access to your technology. But yes, the point is that a lot of the vessels in the open sea are using Starlink. But there is a big discussion on like, how to make sure that Russian fleet will stop operating. One of the simple things that could be done is just like switch off Starlink for Russian fleet. You know, it will, I don't think it will prevent Russian fleet from moving oil around, but it will for a while maybe disrupt their operation capabilities.

D:
Speaking as someone who really didn't know that much about the shadowy oil trade before reading your piece, it's quite astonishing that the trade continues on this scale. I mean, I imagine the Americans focus is probably elsewhere right now. But are European countries doing anything at all to clamp down on these shadow fleets?

T:
Yes. So of course, Europeans and Great Britain and United States are putting sanctions. So the Russian fleet is sanctioned. The problem is, if we are talking about Russian fleet as something that has 3,000 ships, at the time of the writing, EU has sanctioned 600 vessels, UK only 500 vessels, while US remains at 216 vessels, right? So the percentage of sanctioned vessels are really slim. It's very small. The problem again, as I told you, there is no guarantee that this ship will not change its name tomorrow, will not change its jurisdiction, and then will operate under a different name or different jurisdiction, right? It's really hard to disrupt this operation.

K:
To switch focus and zoom out a bit from your latest reporting, I know you've been thinking lately about what the current conflict embroiling the US in the Middle East means for Ukraine. The US has obviously been a hugely important partner for Ukraine, if an increasingly unreliable one since Trump returned to office. My assumption before I read a recent post of yours is that the war in the Middle East is straightforwardly bad news for Ukraine. You know, it means that the US's focus is drawn elsewhere, just for one thing. But is it definitely all negative? Or are there maybe potential upsides for Ukraine?

T:
Well, I mean, you know that more than 200 drone intercepting specialists were sent from Ukraine to the Middle East to help intercept Iranian drones, the expertise that probably only Ukrainians have at this point. So it's good news that we have this expertise and it's valuable right now in the world, especially in the Middle Eastern countries. But also in the European Union, we know that Russian Shahed drones already intercepted Poland airspace and Romanian airspace and also the airspace of Baltic countries. But to the point that, yes, we have this expertise. Yes, it's valuable. Yes, it's right now the hottest commodity on the market. That is good news. Bad news, of course, the attention is drawn to Middle East. Of course, the resources, especially the Patriot missiles that are helping Ukraine to intercept long range rockets are also in high demand in the Middle East. So the other big concern, of course, is that sanctions were lifted from Russian oil. The countries are buying Russian oil with skyrocketed prices. So the revenue of Russia is growing exponentially. And it's, of course, interested in the idea that the war in Iran will last as long as possible. That will benefit them massively.

D:
Before we let you go, we're recording this on Monday. A day after Viktor Orbán's momentous defeat in Hungary to the opposition party Tisza. And it comes after Orbán ran an election campaign largely based on villainising Ukraine and its leadership. He spent this entire war holding up the EU's ability to help Ukraine by waving his veto power around whenever he can. Do you read this electoral result as a positive development for Ukrainians?

T:
Yes, hopefully Hungary will stop blocking the aid to Ukraine and the accession of Ukraine to EU and many other things that Hungary was doing under Viktor Orbán. Hopefully that will change and the new prime minister will be more keen to cooperate with Ukraine, but also with the European Union, not to be a troublemaker, but also not to facilitate Russia in buying Russian oil, something that Europe promised to do at the very beginning of full-scale invasion. You know, there was a commitment to stop buying Russian oil after two years. Now we are year four, fifth even, and Hungary and Slovakia are still actively buying and helping Russia to sustain its revenue after five years of war.

D:
Well, we'll have to see what Péter Magyar does. Rhetorically anyway, it does seem like there is some hope.

T:
Yes, of course, but also we have to understand that he is also from Viktor Orbán's party, so we hope that this is not like Medvedev-Putin situation when hopefully they change for good.

[MUSIC]

D:
Well, I guess it's good to be brought back to earth with a healthy dose of scepticism about what Péter Magyar might do.

K:
Yeah, it was interesting to hear her make that comparison with Putin and his one-time puppet president and prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev. It's a good comparison, I hadn't heard that one before.

D:
I hope it's not a good comparison. Anyway, we'll see. But Katy, is Nina still there?

K:
She is. Do you want me to go get her?

D:
Yes, please.

K:
Okay. Nina's back.

N:
Hello.

D:
Hi, Nina. We've got a request for you. You know, your friend Elon Musk, he hasn't responded to an article that Tanya wrote, or Starlink actually hasn't responded. Could you get in touch with him for us?

N:
Of course I can. Let me just get his, I've got his number. I'll just message him just after the show. No problem.

D:
I actually wish you could, because they really should respond to this accusation.

N:
I kind of think if Trump picks up his phone when you ring him, surely Elon will too.

D:
Okay, well, give it a try.

N:
I will. I promise I'll do my best.

D:
Thank you. Anyway, big recommendation to everyone to go and check out the investigation on Kyiv Independent that Tanya wrote about the shadow fleet using Starlink. And in general, I highly recommend that you read and support the excellent and vitally important work of Kyiv Independent.

K:
Absolutely.

D:
They also have some of the best merch I've ever seen a journalistic outlet create.

K:
They’ve got some sassy t-shirts.

D:
I actually just ordered one of their t-shirts because I was reading this article and then I got drawn to their merch section. So that's in the post to me. Go get yours too. Should we move on to a special edition of the Inspiration Station? Will you stick around for that, please, Katy?

K:
I will stick around for that.

[MUSIC]

D:
Now it's time for the Inspiration Station, the segment in the show in which we recommend our favourite pieces of European culture. But this week we're doing something different with the segment. We're announcing a Europeans podcast first. We're launching a book club.

K:
Oprah has one, Dua Lipa has one, and now we have one. But this book club is not just ours. We are launching this European book club with basically the best partners we could dream of. It is the wonderful people behind the European Review of Books, a fantastic, gorgeous magazine about ideas and culture. And we have their co-founder Sander Pleij here with us today. Hi, Sander.

S:
Hello, hello. How nice to be starting this whole book club. I'm very excited to create a book club with my favourite podcast.

K:
Oh, we're really excited too. So you're basically here to help us set the first homework. Is that right?

S:
Yeah, yeah. We thought, how could we start a book club together? And I think it was Dominic who came up with the excellent book for that. And it was a book that we'd already written about in the ERB, as we call our magazine. And we even spoke with the author. And it was like, I think it's the perfect book for a combined European media conglomerate to start with their book club.

D:
I like that you're giving me the kudos for coming up with that. But I actually think it was you. But that's fine. I'll take it. I'll take it. Anyway, shall we announce what the book is?

S:
Yes, we do. I give you the honour of pronouncing this beautiful name.

D:
Well, OK. Our inaugural Europeans and European Review of Books book club is going to be on the book Perfection by Vincenzo Lataronico.

S:
Beautiful.

D:
Now, it's a book that was originally written in Italian, but I read it in English translated by Sophie Hughes. And you can choose to read it in whatever language you'd rather. I think it's available in maybe dozens of languages, Catalan, German, Portuguese, French, so many. And it's a book that's broadly about a southern European couple who might be described as expats living in Berlin and this unsettling transient life they live there. We're going to be talking about this book on the 14th of May. That is going to be the first episode of the book club. So you've got exactly four weeks to get yourself a copy and read this very short book. It's only 125 pages. You can read a few pages a day.

K:
And the general idea is that we, well, if it's a success, which we very much think it will be, a few times a year, we would like to do this again. We would announce a book that we're going to be talking about with our friends at the European Review of Books in about a month's time. So people can go out and buy it and read it. And also feel involved by sending us in questions, things that they'd like to hear as talking points when we actually talk about it on the podcast.

S:
I'm very, very interested in what the readers and the listeners will think of it. Because the funny thing was, I read the book and then I immediately started giving it to others around me. And I had two opposite reactions. Some people would tell me like, oh, this book is brilliant. It's great. And others told me, I'm really angry with this author. But it is a good book. It is good. But still, I'm angry with the author. And that was such a lovely response for a book. So I'm now wondering what our listeners will think about it. The interesting thing is that you were already mentioning, Dominic, that you can read it in a lot of different languages. And the interesting thing is that it started being translated in all these European languages. And only later, it was translated into English at the last. And this is a point that Vincenzo Latronico also makes. He dislikes that so much of our culture is coming from England and the US. And that pushes away a lot of culture from the other European countries. So the book is about how we are living in this one-dimensional culture. That everything is the same. That if I would go to your house, Katy, or if I would go to your house, Dominic, you would probably have a lot of the same stuff that I would have. We love the same things. We listen to the same things. Everything is very one-dimensional. That's a topic that's already a little bit old. We all know that this happens. Georges Perec already wrote about this 50 years ago in his Les choses, une histoire des années 60.

K:
Which was a big inspiration for this book, right?

S:
Exactly. So that's why Vincenzo thought, I'm going to look at that book again. But then something happens in the book that I think is very much about now and about how we all feel. And I think that our readers and listeners should better find it out themselves than that we are going to tell them what they are going to read. But it is something about how we are all constantly doing things, going to parties, having the best food, having sex, seeing beautiful stuff. And something is still empty inside. So I'm not sure if this is a recommendation.

D:
Yeah, basically, you're saying people brace yourselves for this book. It might expose the hollowness of your own life. You might feel rather attacked. But it's really, really a great read. It's also very entertaining, I think.

S:
And I would love to hear the 14th, if you, Dominic, were also felt attacked a little bit.

D:
Well, you'll just have to wait and see.

[MUSIC]

D:
Time for a happy ending. And Nina, you've very kindly agreed to offer me a happy ending.

N:
That's right. I'm giving you the happy ending. Okay. Basically, you and to all our listeners, if you're heading to a festival this summer, make sure to drink a lot. That's not just to stay hydrated or to get a bit sozzled, but also because you'll potentially help to grow trees, thanks to your wee.

D:
What?

N:
Yes, you've heard right. For the first time, scientists in the UK are using fertiliser made from human urine to grow trees.

D:
That's amazing.

N:
I know. And what they do is they collect urine from portable toilets at large events like the London Marathon and Boomtown Festival, and then they process it on site. Using bacteria, they extract nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, so the same ones that you find in conventional fertilisers, and they turn it into something plants can actually absorb.

D:
I love this idea.

N:
And the plan is to grow, so far, 4,500 native trees, things like beech and Scots pine, and they will then be planted in the Brecon Beacons National Park in Wales.

D:
Brecon Beacons?

N:
Yes, in the Brecon Beacons.

D:
Oh, funny. That's where I'm probably going to go on my holiday this summer.

N:
Well, don't...

D:
Don't what? Don't eat the soil?

N:
I was going to say don't wee up a tree. Because we won't have removed the nitrogen, phosphorus. And basically, so this idea comes from a startup called NPK Recovery, which is based at the University of the West of England in Bristol. And crucially, their method produces fertiliser that doesn't smell, because obviously no one wants to stroll through a stinky wee tree forest.

D:
Stinky wee tree forest. There is the title of this episode.

N:
I feel it's very punchy. Well, tests have already shown that this fertiliser works on grass and crops, so there are high hopes it will also work for trees. Now, just to point out also that this isn't some small pilot. The project has received nearly half a million pounds from the UK Forestry Commission, which gives you a sense that there's real confidence behind it. And it's being co-run with a Welsh charity called Stump Up For Trees, which has already planted around 500,000 trees in the Brecon Beacons and is hoping to double that number with this project. The logic behind the actual process is fairly simple. Right now, we flush away nutrients that plants actually need. And then we spend time and money creating fertilisers to replace them. You can see how that's not really smart. And fertiliser prices, much like oil prices, have been rising very sharply. This is partly because of the war in Iran, which has disrupted supply and pushed up costs for farmers and growers. So once again, here we see an indirect impact of a war and how it basically can impact our own biodiversity in some places. And as a result of this, there is clearly growing interest in alternatives that are local, cheaper, and more sustainable. I feel like there's something quite ingenious about the whole setup. You go to a festival, you stand in the queue for a toilet in a muddy field, and a few years later, you've helped grow a woodland. So it's a reminder that solutions don't always have to be complicated. Sometimes doing your bit is as simple as having a pint or two.

D:
Love this. Perfect, happy ending. Thanks so much, Nina.

N:
You're welcome. Cheers.

D:
That's all we've got time for this week, sadly. Thank you so much for being with me here today, Nina. It was a pleasure, as always. Katy will be back with me next week. But if you're missing us in the meantime, don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter, Good Week, Bad Week on Substack. And check us out on Instagram, Mastodon and Bluesky as well.

N:
Yes, thank you for having had me. That lady from Luxembourg, as somebody referred to me in the survey.

D:
It's true, that lady from Luxembourg.

N:
I hope I get to come back at some point. And shout out to the bison lovers and to the halloumi lovers. Hang in there.

D:
All those lovers. This week's episode was produced by Morgan Childs and Katy Lee using the European-made software of Hindenburg Pro. There was also editorial assistance from Katz Laszlo. Thank you, everyone, for listening.

N:
Thank you and bye.

D:
Do pobachennya.

N:
Äddi a Merci.