In Myanmar, the junta’s air campaign against civilian communities has become one of the most decisive tools sustaining its rule. Imported jet fuel is therefore a strategic lifeline for the junta, and investigations indicate that, despite sanctions, it still reaches Myanmar through opaque logistics networks. These include tactics such as shadow fleets, repeated resale arrangements and intermediaries that obscure fuel origins.
These grey-zone networks have emerged and expanded amid fragmented and uneven enforcement of sanctions. Closing these vulnerabilities will require tighter monitoring of aviation fuel supply chains and more coordinated sanction enforcement by Australia and its partners.
Data and documentations from Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, Myanmar Witness and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Myanmar shows the importance of air power to the regime. Since 2022, airstrikes have increasingly targeted civilian areas, including villages, schools, religious sites and camps for internally displaced people.
Air power has become central because it compensates for the military’s loss of territorial control and its growing vulnerability to resistance forces on the ground. It allows the junta to impose costs on resistance forces, strike communities suspected of supporting resistance groups, damage infrastructure and disrupt supply routes that sustain opposition-controlled areas. It can do all this without exposing its troops to ground combat. Even where fuel constraints limit jet sorties, the junta has adapted by varying flight profiles and using lighter aircraft, producing a persistent pattern of aerial attacks that impose severe humanitarian and economic costs.
Sanctions have not stopped jet fuel reaching Myanmar. Instead, sanction pressures have just pushed Myanmar’s fuel transactions into grey zones in global energy and shipping markets. Investigations by Amnesty International, the Associated Press and Reuters describe an increasingly evasive logistics network involving shadow fleets, disabled vessel tracking, ship-to-ship transfers and repeated cargo resale through intermediaries.
These tactics increasingly mirror the sanction evasions developed by Iran and later adopted by Russia’s shadow fleet. The result is an emerging pattern of authoritarian supply resilience in which logistics networks connecting the Middle East, Asia and regional trading hubs help sustain Myanmar’s aerial campaign.
A January Reuters investigation documented Iranian shipments of jet fuel reaching Myanmar and described vessels using spoofing techniques common in illicit maritime trade. The findings suggest the junta is not simply exploiting gaps in sanctions enforcement but benefiting from a wider ecosystem of sanctions evasion.
Tehran has long developed methods to keep oil and fuel moving despite heavy sanctions. Russia later expanded similar tactics through its shadow fleet after the invasion of Ukraine. Myanmar’s aviation fuel supply chains now appear to reflect the same operational logic. Sanction evasion has become a transferrable skill set.
Authoritarian regimes may differ in scale, ideology and geography, but they are increasingly learning from one another how to move strategic commodities through murky maritime and commercial networks.
That should concern Australia. Canberra has sanctioned individuals and entities linked to aviation fuel imports, but the Myanmar case shows that piecemeal measures struggle to keep pace with adaptive logistics networks. Australia should work more closely with partners to monitor vessels involved in suspicious fuel deliveries, share intelligence on shadow-fleet behaviour, tighten scrutiny of intermediaries and insurers, and pressure commercial actors facilitating aviation fuel transfers into Myanmar.
Supply chains are resilient because responsibility is diffused across traders, shippers, storage operators and financial channels. Effective enforcement should be equally networked. The objective is not simply to impose sanctions but to raise the cost of sustaining the junta’s air war by disrupting the infrastructure that enables aviation fuel to reach Myanmar.
The broader lesson extends beyond Myanmar. When geopolitical crises disrupt energy markets and major powers reprioritise sanctions enforcement elsewhere, grey zones widen. Those grey zones allow sanctioned cargoes to be relabelled, rerouted and quietly delivered to regimes bombing civilians.
Myanmar is therefore a warning. If democratic states want sanctions to bite, they should focus more on disrupting the logistical infrastructure that makes evasion possible. Even modest disruptions to aviation fuel supply chains can reduce sortie frequency, forcing the junta to rely more heavily on lighter aircraft platforms rather than jet fighters.
Sanctions regimes traditionally target governments and financial institutions. But modern conflicts are sustained by global logistics infrastructure. From Tehran to Naypyidaw, authoritarian regimes’ ability to wage war increasingly depends not only on weapons but also on the supply chains that sustain them.