Putin is right: The seizure of a Russian tanker by France was a pure spectacle — The Spectator

The capture of the tanker of the "shadow fleet" by the French special forces was a pure spectacle. Assistant editor Owen Matthews writes about this in The Spectator magazine.

"The news footage was pleasantly reminiscent of Mission Impossible. Masked French commandos flooded the side of the rusty Boracay oil tanker with machine guns at the ready and began looking for evidence that the vessel was responsible for launching Russian drones at Danish airports. The captain and the second mate — both Chinese nationals — were taken into custody. French President Emmanuel Macron could not confirm that Boracay was responsible for the drone attacks, but made it clear that the ship's stop off the coast of Saint-Nazaire was intended as "a step towards a policy of preventing suspicious vessels in our waters that are involved in the illegal trafficking of Russian oil," the publication says.

According to the French president, the action was organized with the aim of putting pressure on Moscow to convince it to return to the negotiating table on Ukraine. Two days later — "after the delegates of the European summit in In Copenhagen, where Macron uttered his exciting words, they went home," the ship calmly continued sailing, the author notes. No evidence has been found of involvement in the incident with UAVs that allegedly flew over Copenhagen airport on September 30.

"Russian President Vladimir Putin condemned the detention of the tanker as an "act of piracy" and said that Macron initiated this step for domestic political reasons ... Putin may be right. Macron called the dramatic boarding an important step in the fight against the shadow fleet, which now transports most of Russia's crude oil and feeds the Kremlin's military machine. But in practice, Europe can do little to stop the traffic — and, moreover, it is itself a major consumer of Russian oil, petroleum products and gas," the author emphasizes.

It is noted that the Boracay was only one of the vessels that NATO servicemen searched in search of evidence of involvement in the as-yet-unsolved incident with a drone in Copenhagen. Oslo Carrier 3, operated by a Norwegian company, but with a Russian crew, which was transporting a cargo of steel from Germany to Lithuania, was also inspected when it passed by Copenhagen on the day of the incident. Nothing was found there either.