The UK government has defended its seizure of a Russian “shadow fleet” oil tanker in the English Channel, after Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened to “respond in kind”.<\/p>\n
The Smyrtos has been anchored off Weymouth after Royal Marines Commandos intercepted and boarded the vessel in a first-of-its-kind operation to disrupt the sanctioned tanker in June.<\/p>\n
The vessel’s captain, Ajay Pant, has been charged with breaching Russian sanctions, accused of directly or indirectly supplying or delivering prohibited Russian oil.<\/p>\n
Overseeing Russian navy drills in the Pacific Ocean, Putin scolded Western countries for “seizing our vessels”, branding such action “nothing other than piracy and banditry”.<\/p>\n
Western nations allege Russia has been operating a “shadow fleet” of hundreds of vessels to evade international sanctions imposed on its oil exports.<\/p>\n
These vessels stand accused of using complex ownership structures and various tactics to obscure the origin of their cargo, masking their link to Russia.<\/p>\n
The UK Ministry of Defence says Russia has a fleet of more than 700 vessels, responsible for carrying 75% of the country’s sanctioned oil.<\/p>\n
This oil is a “critical lifeline for the Kremlin” in “sustaining Russia’s illegal war” in Ukraine, the MoD says.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, Putin warned Western countries against seizing more of these tankers, saying: “If these plans are put into practice, we will have to respond in kind.<\/p>\n
“And not necessarily in the waters where raids on our ships and vessels are planned, but wherever we deem it necessary and appropriate, anywhere.”<\/p>\n
Viktor Liina, commander of Russia’s Pacific Fleet, accused Western countries such as Britain and France of operating their own “shadow fleets”.<\/p>\n
“We have the capacity to inspect and detain vessels of unfriendly states and their shadow fleets, and interagency cooperation is in place, ready to begin addressing these challenges,” Liina said.<\/p>\n
In response to Putin’s comments, the UK government said Britain’s armed forces and law-enforcement officers had boarded the Smyrtos “in full accordance with international law”.<\/p>\n
“The UK is disrupting and deterring shadow fleet vessels and their harmful maritime activity which is fuelling Russia’s war with Ukraine,” a government spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
The spokesperson said unlike Russia’s shadow fleet, “UK armed forces and commercial vessels operate firmly in line with international maritime law”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The UK government has defended its seizure of a Russian “shadow fleet” oil tanker in the English Channel,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":736674,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-736673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=736673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736673\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/736674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=736673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=736673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=736673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}