Russia raises pressure from European shipping lanes to Warsaw and the Kuril islands
Moscow threatened reciprocal ship seizures, Poland said it stopped an alleged Russian-directed murder plot, and Japan protested Putin’s first reported visit to the disputed Kuril chain.
Geopolitics··Morning
Putin threatens reciprocal seizures after the Smyrtos boarding
The BBC reports that Vladimir Putin, watching naval drills in the Pacific, called Western seizures of Russian merchant vessels nothing other than piracy and banditry and said Moscow would have to respond in kind. The UK government defended the June boarding of the sanctioned tanker Smyrtos by Royal Marines Commandos in the English Channel, saying it was carried out in full accordance with international law. Putin said any response would not be confined to the waters where Russian ships were seized, and that Moscow could act wherever it deemed necessary and appropriate. Pacific Fleet commander Viktor Liina told him the navy had enough assets to inspect and detain vessels of unfriendly states and was ready to begin. The UK Ministry of Defence says Russia runs a fleet of more than 700 vessels carrying 75 per cent of its sanctioned oil; the Smyrtos is still detained near Weymouth and its captain, Ajay Pant, has been charged with breaching Russian sanctions. The threat therefore links a single Channel boarding to a wider warning that commercial ships of states Moscow calls unfriendly could face inspection and detention far from European waters.[1]
Poland says it stopped a plot to kill an American in Warsaw
PBS News reports that Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Thursday that a plan to kill a Ukrainian American citizen in Warsaw had been stopped before it could be carried out, and that the suspect, a Russian citizen allegedly recruited by Russia’s secret services, was detained on 7 August. Tusk said it was the first time that someone acting on the order of Russia had sought to attack an American citizen on the territory of another NATO country. Tusk said the targeted man was uncomfortable for the Putin regime. Tomasz Siemoniak, the minister overseeing Poland’s intelligence services, said the operation was carried out in cooperation with US services and that the intended victim was a US citizen of Ukrainian origin. Officials gave no further details, and Russia’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The allegation remains Poland’s account, presented without public evidence of the plot’s full mechanics, but it places an alleged Russian-directed killing attempt inside a NATO capital alongside the week’s naval and territorial moves.[2]
Japan protests Putin’s first reported Kuril visit
The BBC reports that Russian state media said Vladimir Putin visited Iturup, one of the Kuril islands claimed by both Russia and Japan, on Thursday, and that it was Putin’s first visit to the chain. Japan’s foreign minister Toshimitsu Motegi said the islands are inherently Japanese territory both historically and under international law, and that Tokyo strongly protests the visit. The islands lie between Hokkaido in northern Japan and Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula; Japan calls the four southernmost islands the Northern Territories, and the dispute was the main reason Moscow and Tokyo did not sign a peace treaty after World War Two. At the end of the war the Soviet Union annexed the chain and deported around 17,000 Japanese residents. Iturup serves as Russia’s primary military air base in the region; the BBC says Chinese and Russian naval warships sailed through a strait in the Kuril islands on a joint patrol last month. Taken with the threat of reciprocal ship seizures and Poland’s account of a foiled killing plot in Warsaw, the visit shows Moscow pressing boundaries at sea, inside a NATO capital and on disputed Pacific ground in the same news cycle, each time forcing rivals to answer in public.[3], [1], [2]
