THE U.S. seized a Russian-flagged oil tanker that was being shadowed by a Russian submarine on Wednesday, after pursuing it for more than two weeks across the Atlantic as part of Washington’s efforts to block Venezuelan oil exports, U.S. officials said.
It appeared to be the first time in recent memory that the U.S. military has seized a Russian-flagged vessel.
The Marinera, originally known as the Bella-1, had previously slipped through a U.S. maritime blockade of sanctioned tankers in the Caribbean and rebuffed U.S. Coast Guard efforts to board it. Wednesday’s seizure effort, in the Atlantic near Iceland, was first reported by Reuters.
In a post on X, the U.S. military’s European Command said the Trump administration had seized the vessel for violating U.S. sanctions.
“The blockade of sanctioned and illicit Venezuelan oil remains in FULL EFFECT — anywhere in the world,” U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in reply to that post.
Two U.S. officials, who were speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that Wednesday’s operation was carried out by the Coast Guard and U.S. military.
U.S. special forces initially helped secure the tanker but left the vessel, which was now under Coast Guard control, one of the officials said.
The officials said Russian military vessels were in the general vicinity of the operation, including a Russian submarine. It was unclear how close the vessels were to the operation, but there were no indications of a confrontation between U.S. and Russian military forces.
Russia’s transport ministry said it had lost all contact with the Marinera after U.S. naval forces boarded it. A senior Russian lawmaker from the ruling United Russia party, Andrei Klishas, said the U.S. seizure was an act of outright piracy, the TASS state news agency reported.
Last year, French Navy commandos detained a tanker suspected of operating for Russia’s “shadow fleet” off the coast of western France.
NOT CLEAR WHERE VESSEL WILL NOW GO
The seizure took place just days after U.S. special forces swooped into Caracas before dawn on Saturday in a deadly raid to seize President Nicolas Maduro and take him to the United States. The U.S. military turned him over to federal authorities for prosecution on charges involving alleged drug trafficking.
Source: Reuters
