A hardline ally of Vladimir Putin has escalated rhetoric against the United States, openly suggesting that Russia should retaliate by sinking American naval vessels after US forces seized a Russian-flagged oil tanker in the Atlantic.
The comments came after US special forces carried out a dramatic mid-ocean operation to capture the tanker now known as Marinera, an incident that has sharply raised tensions between Washington and Moscow. The vessel, previously called Bella 1, had been travelling from Venezuela toward Russia after earlier links to Iran, triggering a high-stakes pursuit across the Atlantic.
According to officials, the tanker attempted to evade interception by changing both its name and its registered flag during the chase, switching from Guyana to Russia. Moscow reportedly responded by dispatching a submarine to monitor the situation, but US forces ultimately boarded and seized the ship midweek, using support facilities based in the UK.
The seizure prompted an angry reaction from Aleksey Zhuravlyov, deputy head of the Russian State Duma’s defence committee and a frequent pro-Kremlin commentator. He described the operation as “piracy” and warned that Russia’s military doctrine allows for extreme responses, including the potential use of nuclear weapons, in cases he claimed amounted to an attack on Russian sovereignty.
Zhuravlyov argued that the tanker should be treated as Russian territory because it was flying the Russian flag at the time of the operation. His remarks, widely circulated in Russian media, fueled fresh concerns about reckless escalation and increasingly aggressive messaging from Moscow’s political establishment.
Meanwhile, the US military publicly thanked the United Kingdom for its assistance during the operation. RAF surveillance aircraft and the Royal Fleet Auxiliary vessel RFA Tideforce provided logistical and intelligence support after a US request, though British officials stressed that no UK personnel took part in boarding the ship itself.
Defence Secretary John Healey told Parliament that Britain’s role was strictly supportive and fully compliant with international law. He emphasized that the tanker was considered “stateless” when initially intercepted, as it was allegedly operating under a false flag, making the seizure legally permissible.
The operation took place in waters between Iceland and Scotland as the tanker headed northeast, reportedly bound for a Russian Arctic port. After the capture, US European Command publicly acknowledged the UK’s cooperation, a move that came shortly after Donald Trump once again criticized NATO allies for not doing enough to support the United States.
Notably, the US remains the only NATO country to have ever invoked Article 5, the alliance’s collective defense clause, following the September 11 attacks in 2001.
Russia’s foreign and transport ministries have since pushed back, suggesting the operation violated international maritime law. Moscow claims it had granted the vessel temporary permission to sail under the Russian flag just days earlier, on Christmas Eve, and argues the seizure breached the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
With both sides standing firm and rhetoric growing more hostile, the capture of the Marinera risks becoming another dangerous flashpoint in already strained relations between Russia and the West one where aggressive words could have very real consequences.
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