Painting the flag on the hull while at sea seems very similar to the plotline in Lord of War when they repainted the name of the ship in order to avoid detectio

Painting the flag on the hull while at sea seems very similar to the plotline in Lord of War when they repainted the name of the ship in order to avoid detection. It is not a very standard operation at sea. The Russian shadow fleet is well known for flying a false flag so it makes it a bit ironic when a ship of that suddenly claim to be Russian when it want others to treat it as being Russian.