Piracy in the English channel

Starmer produces Kvartal 95 quality video of pointless oil tanker seizure in the death throes of his leadership

A live fire conflict between Russian armed forces and a NATO country is possible and could happen at any time. That will involve either the sinking of a British Royal Naval vessel or possibly the downing of a helicopter by the Russian side. NATO would fudge its response leaving the UK isolated.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that politicians grasp for stunts to improve their popularity at a time when they are facing a political crisis at home. Right now, in Britain, that politician is Prime Minister Keir Starmer. He is the most unpopular Prime Minister on record – although in fairness he faces stiff competition for that title - faces a leadership challenge is Andy Burnham wins the Makerfield bi-election this week, but is nevertheless clinging on to power.

It is another universal truth that politicians are inherently self-serving. Recent British Prime Ministers have shown a remarkable ability to cling on to the top job even when it became abundantly clear that they were sunk politically. Theresa May and Boris Johnson are prime examples of this.

The vast majority of commentators believe that Britain will have a new Prime Minister soon, and Wes Streeting has already said he is willing to trigger a leadership contest next week. So right now Keir Starmer is in a dogfight for survival.

That is very important context.

In the midst of all this, Starmer is stoking up military tension with Russia to distract attention from his failings in office on the basis that anything Russophobic plays well in foggy Albion.

One of the biggest stunts Starmer authorized this week was the seizure of a tanker loaded with Russian oil.

There is a context here too. Clamping down on so-called Russian shadow tankers has been a big drive by G7 nations. The idea is that seizing oil tankers loaded with Russian oil, it might put a big dent in Russia’s oil economy.

Against a backdrop of widespread criticism about the sorry state of the UK armed forces, Starmer wants to get in on the act, as the French and the Americans have both undertaken similar seizures in recent months.

So, the UK mounted a sophisticated military operation against the oil tanker Smyrtos with two naval vessels, helicopters and a Royal Marines boarding party which successfully seized the vessel, with its mix of unarmed Indian and Georgian crew members.

This was all the more bizarre by the fact that the boarding party had a professional video filming crew that took all sorts of footage, including marines fast roping onto the deck, or searching inside the ship, in such a manner that one would conclude that they had boarded the vessel before the Marines themselves.

Even some MPs have criticized this. Ben Obese-Jecty, Conservative MP for Huntingdon (former Prime Minister John’s Major’s constituency way back when) summed it up on X with the following:

There are serious and legitimate questions about the authenticity of the footage released by the MOD of the interdiction of the Russian Shadow Fleet vessel this morning. How is the cameraman ahead of the Marines clearing the stairwell to be able to film them coming towards him. How has the cameraman gone past the open doors of rooms that haven’t yet been cleared? How much of this has been staged for the cameras? I don’t doubt that a Russian tanker was seized and that the operation carried significant risk. I do question the PR and the desperate need for a win by the Government at the Royal Marines’ expense.

If you watched the video footage, it might remind you of the godawful self-promoting publicity TV shows the MoD stages through Channels 4 and 5 in Britain in which the UK pretends to be a modern military super power.

The British military is clearly desperate for good news at a time when it has been revealed to be strapped for cash, troops and kit that works.

The debacle over HMS Dragon’s deployment to Cyprus after the Iran war started has revealed a Royal Navy that has hardly any ships.

We have now learned that the UK currently has none of its 6 attack class submarines at sea as they are all in repair, some of them very long term.

A long awaited defence investment plan has been delayed principally, and as I have pointed out before, because it will contain only bad news.

It will simply confirm that the UK is wasting billions on procurement projects that never deliver on time and when they do deliver, provide equipment that is not fit for purpose.

It’s clear that the UK government has neither a plan nor the money to turn around the situation in which the British Army is at its smallest size since 1822 (that is based on historic data on British Army size issued by the UK Ministry of Defence – I’m not making it up).

So, boarding an unarmed oil tanker with Russian oil in the English channel attempts to demonstrate a British military prowess that hasn’t existed for many years.

But there is jeopardy here.

This is the first time the UK military has mounted such as operation against a tanker carrying Russian oil. There have been a handful of others, orchestrated by the French and the Americans. But we are talking single digit interdictions of a global oil trade in which well over one thousand vessels – by conservative estimates – transport Russian oil around the globe.

The value of the oil in this tanker Smyrtos is estimated to amount to around $30 – 36 million. To put that into context, that amounts to 0.008% of Russia’s total export earnings in 2025 of $422 billion. Think about that for a moment.

This year so far, with the full impact of the war in Iran yet to feed into the data, Russian exports are up 6.3% between January and April, although the current account surplus is largely the same at $20 billion.

The British media are going wild about denting Russia’s war economy and yet they have seized oil the value of which is literally a drop in the ocean of Russia’s export earnings.

Even if the Royal Navy deployed all of its tiny fleet to spend all of its time interdicting tankers loaded with Russian oil, it would still not scratch the surface of Russia’s export economy.

Though it would leave the UK at risk of other threats to our security at a time when we can’t even prevent large numbers of rubber dinghies crossing the channel from France loaded with Asylum seekers.

This, ladies and gentlemen, goes right to the heart of how rotten UK policy is towards Russia.

It is increasingly driven by domestic political theatre and the need to stand up to Russia,

Now, it is taking a more dangerous turn, as a Prime Minister who is holed beneath the water line himself, is trying to sink Britain through piracy on the high seas.

Russia has yet to issue a formal statement in response. We should assume that they will be furious in the Kremlin.

This year, for the first time, Russia has started to send Russian Navy escort vessels to accompany tankers through the English channel. That hasn’t happened this time around. The risk of a direct confrontation between Russian and Royal Naval assets on the high seas just grew larger.

This happens at a time when there is much discussion about how and when Russia and NATO will be forced into a war against each other. There is no evidence that Russia wants that, rather than wanting to secure its aims in Ukraine.

Yet, neither will it restrain itself forever against what it considers to be hostile acts against its economic interests by NATO military forces.

Some commentators recently have raised the risk of a Russian nuclear strike on a NATO facility. I noticed that Glenn Diesen discussed this recently with Sergei Karaganov and John Mearsheimer.

Karaganov asserts that that may be the only way to restore Russian deterrence against a gradually encroaching NATO.

And yet I discount this theory for the following reasons.

First, Russia has considerable escalation options within Ukraine itself including the use of a tactical nuclear strike against Kyiv or another major centre.

But it has conventional escalation options in Ukraine short of that too.

It could use a precision conventional strike to take out Zelensky for example using an Oreshnik.

It could use Oreshnik’s in more explicitly front line targets or to cripple Ukraine’s vital rail infrastructure.

Critically, Russia would do this in response to further and deeper Ukrainian strikes into Russian territory on the basis of the logic and law of warfare.

In their statecraft, they always try to put a legal justification on their actions. Now, western policy makers will contest the legal basis of their argument every time. However, Russia will nevertheless make the legal case for everything that it does and it would struggle to make the legal case right now or ever for a first strike nuclear attack even in Ukraine.

In an International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion of 1996, it suggested that the threat or use of nuclear weapons should be prohibited in broad terms, however, made the following point;

The Court cannot conclude definitively whether the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be lawful or unlawful in an extreme circumstance of self-defence, in which the very survival of a State would be at stake.

Right now, with NATO not committing ground forces to Ukraine, with the battlefield together with the energy and economic realities of war tipped decisively in its favour. Russia would not be able to convince anyone that its very survival was at stake because of ever deeper Ukrainian strikes into its territory.

A tactical nuclear strike against a NATO country is a whole different ball game, jumping onto a wholly new escalation ladder and climbing straight towards the top.

NATO is absolutely involved in a proxy war against Russia, but Russia is striking back at NATO in other ways including through hybrid warfare and – to use a judo analogy – using the weight and force of the opponent against them.

It is clear, at least to me, having been studying the economics for some time, that one incentive to Russia in stringing out a low intensity attritional war against Europe, in Ukraine, is that the combined weight of sanctions against Russia are hurting Europe and having insufficient macro impact on Russia itself.

War is accelerating Europe’s decline, so why stop now?

Striking a European country with a nuclear weapon is unnecessary to the political goals of the campaign. Europe is killing itself, why try to hurt Russia in the process?

A nuclear strike option carries so many unknowns and too few upsides for Russia.

Russian statecraft towards Europe during the Ukraine conflict has been a game of chicken in which the risk of massive escalation acts as a deterrence. But once you roll the nuclear die, you immediately give away the biggest act of deterrence at your disposal and are less able to control what comes next.

The big gamble on the Russian side is that a tactical nuclear strike would force Europe to the negotiating table, but that is a huge IF on the basis that European nations have been singularly unwilling to talk to Russia since 2014.

Unwittingly, Russia may unleash a chain of events that it was not able to control, posing a far greater risk to its state survival that dragging things out in Ukraine and watching Europe slowly fall apart in the process.

I never say never with any risk, but I continue to judge that we are a very long way from Russia using nuclear weapons in Ukraine, let alone against a NATO state.

So where would that leave us?

That takes us right back to the high seas, and Keir Starmer’s gamble on boarding tankers loaded with Russian oil.

The UK will make the case that this is legally defensible, however, the Captain of the vessel will consider that he has the right of self-defence under international law including under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. It is this legal grey area in which Russia is most likely to justify the use of live fire weapons against NATO military capabilities.

A possible scenario is that Russian military security contractors accompany vessels with man portable air defence systems to down a helicopter attempting to effect a boarding exercise.

However, this carries the risk of the supporting Royal Naval vessels firing upon and disabling the tanker itself.

I think the more likely option is that a tanker carrying Russian oil will issue a distress signal summoning up a direct response from Russian military assets.

The frigates and missile corvettes that the Russian navy has used to escort some tankers through the English channel are far better armed that their Royal Navy equivalents and in an extreme scenario could potentially sink a Royal Navy vessel, of which there are already too few.

Russia would in parallel mount an international diplomatic campaign to justify its actions as legal on the basis that commercial vessels were coming under attack by the British in international waters.

Russia would seek to position this action as happening in international waters and not in the sovereign territory of any NATO state, fudging the Article 5 issue.

That would put European NATO allies in a difficult position in understanding how best to respond.

I suspect most would back down and insist on a negotiated solution to the dispute, positioning it as a UK-Russia matter.

NATO would condemn Russian actions as would the G7 and possibly impose even more sanctions on Russian shipping.

Britain would be unable to strike back against Russia militarily as it does not have the capabilities.

Russia would have established deterrence on the high seas, sending a clear warning shot against other NATO members.

I am absolutely sure that no one in 10 Downing Street will have even begun to think through these risks, nor the political consequences for the government of the day.

Seizing an oil tanker on the high seas was an act of the most idiotic political theatre, aimed only at pretending that the UK has a functioning and effective military, and at shoring up Starmer’s position at a time when he is facing imminent ejection from office.