The vessels — the Kairos, a 274-meter tanker, and the Virat, an aframax-class ship — had been touring in waters north of Turkey when every reported what officers described as an exterior affect. Each ships are among the many group of vessels focused by Western sanctions for transporting Russian crude. In recent times, these tankers have sometimes operated with restricted transparency, patchy regulatory oversight and irregular insurance coverage preparations, traits which have unnerved threat assessors even in quieter weeks.
