Ilya Bugay. Photo: social media
The oil tanker Marinera, which was seized by the European Command of the US Armed Forces in the North Atlantic on Wednesday, belongs to a Russian company, Burevestmarin, Novaya Gazeta Europe has discovered.
The director and sole owner of Burevestmarin is Ilya Bugay, an entrepreneur from Russian-annexed Crimea, according to the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), the United Nations agency responsible for shipping, and Russia’s Unified State Register of Legal Entities.
The company was registered in the Russian city of Ryazan six months ago, and posted several shipping industry vacancies on job search websites in 2025.
Since 2018, Bugay has also been CEO of Rusneftekhimtorg, a Moscow-based petrochemical vendor that reported a net loss in 2024, the most recent period for which data is available. According to his own social media accounts, Bugay graduated from Simferopol’s Crimean Federal University in 2008 and resides in Moscow.
The US European Command announced the seizure of the Marinera oil tanker off the coast of Iceland on Wednesday. The US pursuit of the vessel — then called the Bella 1 — began in December when the tanker made an unsuccessful attempt to dock in Venezuela while sailing under the flag of Guyana, which according to the IMO database was “false”.
Days later, mid-pursuit, the ship changed its flag to a Russian one, and its name to Marinera. According to Reuters, the tanker was being escorted by a Russian military submarine when it was seized.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the Marinera was trying to bypass US sanctions, and was seized on the basis of a warrant issued by an American court. She said the crew would be brought to the US for trial “if necessary”.
The Bella 1 had been under US sanctions since June 2024, and, according to TankerTrackers, an online service which tracks and reports shipments of crude oil, had transported at least 7.3 million barrels of Iranian and 3.7 million barrels of Venezuelan oil to China over the past four years.
On Wednesday, the Southern Command of the US Armed Forces announced the capture of a second oil tanker associated with Russia, the M/T Sophia, which was seized while sailing in international waters in the Caribbean Sea.
The tanker came under US sanctions in October for allegedly being part of Russia’s “shadow fleet”, which is used to bypass the embargo on Russian oil exports. TankerTrackers said that the M/T Sophia left Venezuela’s shores immediately after the capture of the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, in a US military operation on Saturday.
