The White House has dramatically escalated its confrontation with the Kremlin by stepping up attempts to capture a sanctioned oil tanker as it’s accompanied by Russian military vessels.
Just south of Iceland in the Atlantic, U.S. military and Coast Guard forces are currently engaged in a rapidly unfolding operation to seize the vessel, now known as the “Marinera” after a hasty name change, The Wall Street Journal reports. A second tanker is reportedly subject to similar efforts off the northern coast of South America.
U.S. forces have been pursuing the Marinera for at least two weeks as part of an ongoing blockade of sanctioned ships in waters near Venezuela.
Having apparently fought back against efforts to board the ship earlier in December, the tanker, originally named the “Bella 1,” reportedly headed out into the open waters of the Atlantic, where it’s since undergone a name change and altered registration to become, nominally, a Russian boat.
Despite demands from Russian officials to cease their pursuit, the newspaper writes that Coast Guard vessels have continued following the ship across the ocean toward Iceland, where it’s now been accompanied by what the WSJ describes as a Russian “submarine and other naval assets.”
The tanker forms part of a global “dark fleet” used to ferry oil from otherwise sanctioned countries, including Russia, Venezuela and Iran, of which the U.S. has in recent weeks apprehended two other boats, the “Skipper” and the “Centuries.”
Russia’s dispatch of the submarine and other seacrafts come just days after Trump launched a lightning invasion of Venezuela to capture the country’s long-ruling despotic leader Nicolas Maduro, himself a Russian ally, and his wife Cilia Flores, who now face narco-trafficking charges at a New York federal court.
That attack, decried by critics as an all-out assault on the rules based international order, appears to have marked a stark shift in the Trump administration’s foreign policy outlook, with the president and his allies now threatening a military takeover of Greenland despite the arctic state technically being a territory of Denmark, otherwise a NATO ally.
Given the MAGA leader’s mounting aggression toward friend and enemy alike, Putin’s decision to send advanced naval assets to accompany the tanker will be received in many diplomatic circles as a rebuke to the U.S. president, not least after Trump’s comments about the Russian tyrant aboard Air Force One Saturday amid ongoing talks toward a prospective end to the conflict in Ukraine.
“I’m not thrilled with Putin,” Trump told reporters. “He’s killing too many people.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment on this story.
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