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 impression. Each ships are among the many group of vessels focused by Western sanctions for transporting Russian crude. Lately, these tankers have sometimes operated with restricted transparency, patchy regulatory oversight and irregular insurance coverage preparations, traits which have unnerved danger assessors even in quieter weeks.
