Again, I'm not sure getting a ship registered (or just buying one) in a random island country through a shell company would be that hard. > funds transferred,

Again, I'm not sure getting a ship registered (or just buying one) in a random island country through a shell company would be that hard. > funds transferred, meetings held and operations authorized. It's Russia... I doubt there would be a lot oversight. But they might just as well get the money from one of the "private" companies run by Putin's cronies with zero direct involvement by the Russian government. Anyway, I still think that acquiring the ship itself is still a relatively trivial problem to solve.