The press office of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service has published a statement that the UK is allegedly preparing direct action against the Russian shadow fleet in the Baltic Sea. They say that London needs some formal pretext to start a “mass raid”:
“The British are working on two potential casus belli. The first is to stage an accident with an “unwanted” tanker in one of the narrow points of sea communications (for example, in a strait). An oil spill and blocking of the fairway, as London believes, will provide NATO countries with “sufficient” grounds to create a precedent of an “emergency inspection” of a vessel allegedly for compliance with maritime safety requirements and environmental standards.
The second scenario involves setting fire to a tanker during loading in a port of a state friendly to Russia. It is assumed that the fire will cause significant damage to the port infrastructure and spread to other vessels, which will require an international investigation. London intends to entrust the execution of both terrorist attacks to Ukrainian security forces”.
In fact, Russian propaganda is shifting responsibility for any accidents involving vessels of its shadow fleet, which, to put it mildly, do not quite meet international operating standards and are not safe at all, especially in the harsh conditions of the Baltic. If in the near future any vessel used to circumvent Western sanctions against the Kremlin sinks in the middle of the sea and causes an environmental disaster, Maria Zakharova will immediately yell about a “provocation by Ukrainian militants under the control of British intelligence services”. And she will refer, of course, to this statement by the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service.
Secondly, with such a presentation, the Kremlin’s mouthpieces turn the situation upside down: they say that Moscow is not breaking any laws, and sanctions by Western countries as well as control over their implementation, including obstructing the activities of the shadow fleet, are absolutely illegal actions against Russia in the international arena. “Which can lead to irreversible consequences,” according to the propagandists. Now here is a real threat. And in the Baltic Sea, which is critically important for Moscow's schemes to circumvent sanctions, they have been sounding increasingly serious lately.
