The United States military yesterday announced the seizure of a Russian-flagged oil tanker in the North Atlantic for sanctions violations, bringing an end to a multi-week pursuit by American forces. Photo / Handout, US European Command, AFP
Ever since coming to power more than a quarter of a century ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin has yearned for Washington to treat him as the leader of a great power, an equal of the United States, as it did during the Cold War.
Instead, in the wintry waters of the North Atlantic, US President Donald Trump has treated Russia as a minnow, swatting aside its leader in the most chastening way.
Moscow had staked its reputation and geopolitical credibility on protecting the rusting oil tanker boarded and seized by US forces south of Iceland yesterday.
It reflagged the vessel with Russian colours, added it to its official registry, issued formal diplomatic warnings to Washington and finally dispatched a submarine and other naval assets to shield it – all in vain.
In the process, Putin has once again demonstrated his inability to protect Russia’s clients and dependents.
He failed to save either Bashar al-Assad in Syria or Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, despite extending patronage to both men.
Now he has shown he cannot even safeguard a leaky rust bucket on the high seas.
When Putin intervened in the 19-day pursuit of the Bella 1 across the Atlantic – an operation likened to the slow-speed chase of OJ Simpson’s Ford Bronco along California’s freeways 31 years ago – the gamble must initially have seemed a reasonable one.
For the past year, nothing appeared capable of shaking the foundations of Putin’s relationship with Trump.
The Bella 1, as it was then known, formed part of the so-called shadow fleet of tankers used to move oil from Russia, Iran and Venezuela in defiance of sanctions imposed by the US, Britain and other Western allies.
That fleet has been a vital lifeline for Moscow, allowing Russia to sell oil, prop up its economy, fund its war in Ukraine and conduct a hybrid campaign against Europe, using shadow-fleet vessels to conduct sabotage operations against undersea infrastructure and launch drones into European airspace.
Recently, however, the shadow fleet has come under mounting pressure. European states have moved to intercept vessels more robustly, while Ukraine has attacked them in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean.
Pressure on the Kremlin intensified last month when the US imposed a maritime embargo on sanctioned oil tankers operating in and out of Venezuela.
US forces subsequently intercepted and boarded two shadow-fleet vessels and then attempted to stop the Bella 1 – which had been under US sanctions for 18 months on suspicion of carrying cargo for Hezbollah – in the Caribbean on December 20 as it neared the Venezuelan coast.
Previously registered in Panama, Palau, Liberia, and the Marshall Islands, the tanker was flying the Guyanese flag – fraudulently, according to US officials, who noted that it did not appear on Guyana’s shipping register.
The Russian, Indian and Ukrainian crew ignored orders to stop, turned the ship around and fled towards the Atlantic, repeatedly broadcasting distress signals to nearby vessels. The chase had begun.
As Christmas Day passed, the panicked crew hauled down the Guyanese colours, painted a Russian flag on the hull and appealed to Moscow, which they believed alone had the power to save them.
Under international maritime law, a vessel falsely flying a flag is regarded as stateless and may be boarded by the authorities of any state. A legitimately flagged ship, by contrast, enjoys protection from such interference.
On New Year’s Eve, Russia relented. It added the tanker – along with four others that had operated in Venezuelan waters – to its official shipping registry.
The Bella 1, Moscow insisted, was no longer stateless. It was now a Russian vessel, sailing a Russian flag, registered to a Russian port. It was also given a new name: Marinera.
This, the Kremlin calculated, was a sanctuary of last resort – and surely sufficient. Personal ties between Trump and Putin aside, the US might be expected to give up the pursuit, given that the vessel had turned back before reaching Venezuela, was not carrying oil and that boarding it risked breaching international law and triggering a diplomatic incident.
Yet as Bella 1 steamed towards what it hoped would be the safety of Russian waters, the Trump Administration showed no sign of abandoning the chase.
Moscow doubled down, issuing a formal diplomatic reprimand demanding that Washington halt its pursuit. Then, in a final escalation, it dispatched a submarine and other naval assets to escort and protect the vessel.
The Russian President clearly hoped to deter the Americans with this show of force. Such tactics had worked before.
In May last year, the Russian Air Force scrambled a fighter jet to prevent the Estonian Navy from boarding the Jaguar, another shadow-fleet tanker, in the Baltic Sea.
But the US is not Estonia, as Russia has now discovered. Trump did not so much call Russia’s bluff as dismiss it outright.
Backed by Britain, which provided naval and Air Force assets and authorised the use of its bases, the US seized the vessel, delivering the Kremlin a stinging rebuke.
Putin may have assumed that his warm personal relationship with Trump would work in his favour. It did not.
Indeed, the intervention may have further soured relations between Moscow and Washington, already strained after Putin claimed last month that Ukraine had targeted one of his residences with drones.
Trump initially expressed outrage on Putin’s behalf, but then – unusually – accepted a US intelligence assessment concluding that Russia had fabricated the claim. The deception was not lost on the President.
At the same time, Trump is likely to have been irritated by the Russian leader’s failure to heed a message his Administration has been making with increasing force: South America is Washington’s backyard.
In early December, his Administration published a new security strategy declaring that the region falls squarely within Washington’s sphere of influence under his so-called “Donroe Doctrine”, a muscular update of the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine asserting US primacy in the Western Hemisphere.
By reflagging a vessel attempting to breach the US blockade of Venezuela, Putin was directly challenging that doctrine – and Trump did not like it one bit.
The Kremlin has seen potential upsides in the Donroe Doctrine.
Russian officials hope the US will become bogged down in South America, and there is scope for Moscow to exploit post regime-change instability in Venezuela by backing rival factions vying for power following Maduro’s capture.
Beyond distracting Washington, such entanglement could also bolster Russia’s claim to dominance over Ukraine and other former Soviet states.
Yet even as Putin seeks advantage in Ukraine, he has watched Trump deliver a serious blow to Russia’s global pretensions.
The raid in Caracas demonstrated that the Russian air defences Maduro so often boasted of were as ineffective as those that failed to protect Iran’s military facilities from Israeli and US strikes last year.
In what other Russian partners will see as a further sign of weakness, Putin has neither condemned Maduro’s ousting nor commented on it at all – just as he was largely silent after the fall of Assad, despite Russia’s substantial military presence in Syria.
Painful though it will be, the Kremlin has little choice but to absorb its failure to defend the Bella 1.
Whether Trump’s irritation with the Russian leader translates into a more sympathetic posture towards Ukraine remains to be seen.
One conclusion is unavoidable: in his latest display of raw power, the US President has laid bare Russian weakness before a watching world.
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