Rolf Ivar Skår

Strategist | Geopolitical Analyst | Advocate for Democracy & Global Cooperation.

Norges Handelshøyskole (NHH)  Visit Rjukan

Rjukan, Vestfold og Telemark, Norway

16,680 followers

Dec 28, 2025

How Ukraine Actually Wins the War: Budanov Sanctions

Wars are not won by statements.
They are won by cutting the cash flow.

Russia’s war economy still runs on one thing: oil money.
And oil money still moves on ships.

That is the weak point.

Not the front line.
Not speeches.
Not hope.

The shadow fleet.

Hundreds of aging tankers, opaque ownership structures, fake flags, spoofed AIS signals — all designed to turn sanctions into a suggestion rather than a constraint.

We keep calling this “sanctions.”
But sanctions without enforcement are just words.

This is where Budanov sanctions come in.

Not as rhetoric — but as logic.

Budanov sanctions mean this:

• Treat the shadow fleet as a wartime financing system, not a commercial sector
• Identify, expose, and isolate vessels with the same seriousness as weapons supply chains
• Make ships uninsurable, unserviceable, and unbankable
• Use port inspections, detentions, safety enforcement, and legal seizure aggressively
• Impose real consequences on every intermediary that enables this trade

The goal is simple:

Make every barrel harder to move, cheaper to sell, and riskier to touch.

This is not escalation.
This is enforcement.

No missiles required.
No speeches needed.

Just the political will to admit one truth:
As long as Russia can move oil freely, it can fund war freely.

When the ships stop, the war slows.
When the money dries up, the war ends.

Ukraine doesn’t win by waiting for Russia to change.

Ukraine wins by making war economically impossible.

The shadow fleet is not a side issue.
It is the artery.

And arteries are meant to be cut — legally, decisively, relentlessly.

How Ukraine Actually Wins the War: A Game Theory Perspective (Budanov Sanctions)

This war is not a battlefield problem.
It is a game design problem.

Russia’s strategy is simple:
convert oil into money, money into time, and time into pressure on the West.

As long as that loop holds, Russia believes it wins.
From a game-theory perspective, sanctions have failed because they target prices, not payoffs.

Russia adapted.

The shadow fleet is that adaptation.
In game-theory terms, the shadow fleet changes the payoff matrix:

• It lowers Russia’s cost of defiance
  • It raises the West’s cost of enforcement
  • It turns sanctions into a weakly dominated strategy

As long as the shadow fleet exists, Russia’s dominant strategy is clear: continue the war.

So the game must be changed.
This is where Budanov sanctions matter — not as rhetoric, but as mechanism.

Budanov sanctions mean shifting the game from price control to risk dominance.

Instead of asking “Is the oil cheap enough?”
We ask: “Is moving this oil worth the risk?”
In game-theory terms, the objective is to:

• Increase uncertainty
  • Raise transaction costs
  • Collapse plausible deniability
  • Destroy stable equilibria

Comment from :

Stanislav Filshtinskiy

Co-Founder at AttackForge – Penetration Testing Management Platform

V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University  AttackForge™

Thank you Rolf Ivar Skår for this analysis.
I would add a few, I believe – important, lines here.

Ukraine action is not pirating! Quite the opposite.

Ukraine actions are legal, if the flag country does not recognise this vessel. And so far none of the attacked vessels flag countries recognised them.

Even more – those ships can be boarded by any state.

UNCLOS Article 110(1)(d):
A ship may be boarded if it is “without nationality” or “is flying a foreign flag or refusing to show its flag.

A vessel using a false flag is treated as A stateless vessel.
This is the same classification used for piracy, smuggling, and other high-seas crimes.

Under the San Remo Manual and customary international humanitarian law civilian vessels using false flags to aid a belligerent may be treated as unlawful combatants.

And unlawful combatants are … not protected under any law.

Stein Ove R.

Thanks so much for sharing Rolf Ivar Skår 👍

This is not really about sanctions.
It is about power, and asymmetric ethics.

The West is rule-based and assumes others are constrained by the same norms. They are not. As both Alexander Dugin and Niccolò Machiavelli remind us, power follows purpose, not principle. For Russia, what works is permitted.

Projecting Western ethical restraint onto an amoral adversary is a strategic mistake. It is entering the ring with one hand tied behind your back.

The shadow fleet is not a loophole; it is the predictable outcome of optional enforcement. It exists because oil can still be insured, serviced, and moved with limited risk.

Wars are decided by logistics, capital flows, insurance regimes, and risk, not rhetoric.

Enforcement is not escalation.
It is the restoration of credibility, deterrence, and realism.

As long as oil moves freely, the war continues.
When shipping becomes unpredictable and unprofitable, war financing collapses.

The shadow fleet is the test
And tests always reveal the truth.

Joe Macri

Stein Ove R. – It appears that some Europeans are under the illusion that they can survive by sanctioning Russia on everything, but that has proven to be wrong after 4 years. It is Europe who is delusional and in turmoil, the people are protesting and rebelling over high fuel costs, industry closures , lack of fertilisers and high food prices all linked to shortages of energy and high taxes caused by the drain of this unnecessary Ukraine / Russian war that Russia’s has clear superioriority over , but a war that shows no end in sight. There appears to be no concern about the endless high numbers of deaths happening daily coming from our western democracies. It’s just a dog eat dog senario.

Stanislav Filshtinskiy

Joe Macri – would you prefer Ukraine to surrender and let ruzzіаns to complete what they started with Holodomor?

David Shapiro

Joe Macri Joe, you’re suggesting that the current sanctions were implemented four years ago and that they had an immediate effect. Neither is true, and in any case, that’s not how sanctions work. Think of a noose around one’s neck that tightens very slowly. We know the sanctions are working because the Russians, their shills and bots are crowing.

Joe Macri

Rolf Ivar Skår – Russia biggest export is gas. In any case the biggest buyers are the Brics countries. They will certainly not accept the blocking of the ships carrying their commodities. It would require a full world wide blockage of tankers , which would mean WW3 as China, India,Asian and other global south countries would have to intervene in such an undemocratic action.

Stanislav Filshtinskiy

Joe Macri – would you be able to provide any evidence for your claims about ruzzіаn gas exports?
As for BRICS… tankers are going aflame right now… and … crickets ……

Star comment :

Svitlana Sydorenko

The “shadow fleet” is not a loophole — it is Russia’s war-financing backbone. Every unnoticed tanker, every spoofed AIS signal, every ignored port call is not just a missed sanction — it’s a direct subsidy to war.
Budanov sanctions must not remain theory. It’s time to turn them into practice: isolate, detain, confiscate. Not tomorrow — now.
And let’s not forget:
When Russia strikes Ukrainian oil refineries, they do it to freeze civilians and crush the economy.
When Ukraine targets Russian oil exports — it’s to stop missiles, tanks, and war crimes.
That is the difference between aggression and resistance.

Alina Pereverzieva

Ukraine is forced to do what the European Union should have done over these four years — cut off the flow of russian oil to the global market.

Young Min OK

A powerful analysis, Rolf.  

Conflicts are sustained by logistics and financing, and the shadow fleet remains one of the least addressed yet most critical components of Russia’s war economy. 
 
Sanctions only matter when enforcement matches intent, and treating these vessels as part of a wartime financing network—not a commercial anomaly—is a necessary shift in mindset.  

Your breakdown highlights the operational reality: economic pressure is most effective when it targets the arteries that keep the system alive.