Following international sanctions, tankers from Moscow carrying oil and other petroleum products are increasingly going dark—the practice of switching off the ship’s transponders—and vanishing from tracking systems. “We’re seeing a spike in Russian tankers turning off transmissions deliberately to circumvent sanctions,” Ami Daniel, CEO of predictive intelligence company Windward, said in an interview with CNN. “The Russian fleet is starting to hide its whereabouts and its exports.” Ever since the Russia–Ukraine war began on Feb. 24, there has been a 600 percent spike in dark activity among Russian oil tankers. Russian tankers went dark 33 times during the week of March 12, which is 236 percent higher than the weekly average for the previous 12 months, Windward said. The company uses artificial intelligence to track activity in the maritime industry. International maritime law requires commercial vessels to have the ships’ automatic identification system (AIS) switched on while at sea. The U.S. Treasury …