Russia has threatened retaliation if the EU follows through on new proposals to seize more Moscow-linked oil tankers in the Baltic Sea, warning that it will treat any seizures as an attack, writes "Politico".
Alexei Zhuravlev, deputy chairman of Russia's parliamentary defense committee, said that "any attack on our carriers can be viewed as an attack on our territory, even if the ship is flying a foreign flag".
His comments come after "Politico" revealed that countries including Finland, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia are considering new legal mechanisms to seize more of Moscow's so-called shadow fleet - aging ships with unclear ownership and unknown insurance.
Countries are increasingly concerned that Russia is using these aging tankers to evade Western sanctions designed to cut Moscow's oil revenues and drain its military budget. Oil and gas exports account for almost half of the Kremlin's total tax revenue and are crucial to financing its war in Ukraine.
Zhuravlyov, leader of the nationalist Rodina party, said any move to seize tankers would also trigger "countermeasures" by Moscow, which could include "boarding Western ships in the Baltic, but also active measures by our Baltic fleet, which certainly cannot be compared with the fleet of small boats of the Baltic states".
Meanwhile, Ukraine praised the countries' proposals, which gained new momentum after Finland seized a Russian navy ship in the shadows in December, accusing it of sabotaging several cables in the Baltic Sea.
Andriy Yermak, who heads the cabinet of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, noted that the new initiatives are "very important now, because every day of disrupted logistics seriously affects Russia's ability to finance the war".