World News
Britain defends a tanker seizure as Moscow threatens to answer in any waters it chooses
By Staff Writer | 13 August 2026
The Smyrtos has been held off Weymouth since Royal Marines boarded it in June. Russia's president has now told a naval exercise in the Pacific that Western detentions amount to piracy and will be answered in kind.
The British government has defended its seizure of a sanctioned oil tanker in the English Channel, saying the boarding was carried out in full accordance with international law. The vessel, the Smyrtos, was intercepted and boarded by Royal Marines Commandos in June in the first operation of its kind, and has been anchored off Weymouth since. Its captain, Ajay Pant, has been charged with breaching Russian sanctions by supplying or delivering prohibited Russian oil, directly or indirectly.
The response came after Vladimir Putin, speaking on Wednesday aboard a warship during a Pacific naval exercise, described Western detentions of Russian-linked vessels as a breach of international maritime law and warned that Moscow would retaliate. He said any response would not necessarily come in the waters where the ships were taken, and could be mounted in any area Russia considered necessary and appropriate, including the Pacific.
It's nothing but piracy and robbery. If this is done, we will be forced to respond in kind.
Vladimir Putin, President of Russia
What the Russian navy says it is ready to do
Admiral Viktor Liina, who commands Russia's Pacific Fleet, reported to the president that his ships were ready to begin inspecting commercial vessels serving what he called unfriendly nations. He argued that many ships operated by British, French and other European carriers sail under the flags of third countries, which in his account makes them a shadow fleet of their own. "We have enough assets for inspection and detention of vessels of the unfriendly nations and their shadow fleet," he said. "We are ready to start performing the task."
Both claims are claims by the parties who made them. Neither the Russian statements nor the British reply have been independently tested, and the account of the Smyrtos boarding remains the government's own.
Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia's Security Council, went further, arguing that a symmetrical approach would entitle Russia to attack merchant vessels of hostile nations in its own or neutral waters where there were grounds to suspect cargo carried in an enemy's interest. That is a statement of asserted entitlement rather than of policy adopted, and it has not been matched by any announced order.
The scale of the fleet, and of the enforcement
The Ministry of Defence puts the Russian shadow fleet at more than 700 vessels, carrying 75 per cent of the country's sanctioned oil, and describes that trade as a lifeline sustaining the war in Ukraine. Western governments say the ships use layered ownership structures and flag arrangements to obscure the origin of their cargo.
Enforcement has tightened through the year. More than 630 vessels were under European Union sanctions as of mid-August 2026, which bars them from the bloc's ports, and nine tankers suspected of circumventing sanctions have been seized around the European Union since January. Most recently the Italian navy, working with other member states, boarded a tanker in the central Mediterranean suspected of not being entitled to the flag it flew, an inspection that did not end in seizure.
The ship, and the people still on it
The Smyrtos remains detained at a port near Weymouth and is being monitored by British authorities. Responsibility for the upkeep of the vessel, including supplies for the crew aboard, sits with the owner. Of the original twenty five crew, twenty two were repatriated in July.
A single tanker at anchor off the Dorset coast is now the reference point in an argument about who may stop whom at sea, and neither side has offered a way of settling it that does not involve another boarding.