> Would you want to be a captain of an EU registered ship stuck in Russia for an indeterminate amount of time with limited ability to pay for (sanctions) repairs of an uncertain nature?

Your hypothesis is quickly rejected/proven to be bullshit by the fact that the travel distance that the ship took after being rejected by Norway was greater than the distance it would need to take to get to a Russian port.

And instead the ship planted itself where? Right in the middle of the English channel? We're talking about hitting ports from Norway, Lithuania, and now UK/France/Belgium?