French Commandos Stage Armed Takeover of Russian Cargo Ship: Western Targeting of Shipping Continues to Escalate

On May 31 French naval forces, supported by the United Kingdom launched an armed assault on the tanker Tagor close to 600 kilometres west of Brittany in international waters, after the vessel had departed from the Russian port of Murmansk reportedly transporting oil for export.. French commandos boarded the ship by rappelling from helicopters onto its deck, while British forces contributed surveillance, tracking, and monitoring support, including a Merlin helicopter operating from the warship HMS Somerset. After French President Emmanuel Macron publicly released footage of the boarding operation, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused French forces of piracy. She stressed that international maritime law does not permit a warship to compel a vessel to alter course and escort it from international waters to a national port, making the armed takeover of the civilian vessel illegal. 

Reports first published on February 13 indicated that British Defence Secretary John Healey met with his counterparts from Baltic and Nordic countries at the Munich Security Conference to discuss plans for illegal seizures of tankers that were transporting Russian oil for export. The U.S. Armed Forces itself initiated an unprecedented series of operations from late 2025 to commandeer ships transporting Venezuelan oil for export, with at least nine having been taken over by force by the time of the conference. In February influential aide to Kremlin and Chairman of the Russian Maritime Board Nikolai Patrushev stated that a permanent naval presence would be essential to prevent European countries from obstructing Russian civilian shipping’s access to international waters, stressing that the Navy is ready to use force to protect commercial vessels from Western attacks. "In the main maritime areas, including regions far from Russia, substantial forces must be permanently deployed - forces capable of cooling the ardour of Western pirates," he added.

Commenting on ongoing Western operations to target civilian shipping, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in February warned that the objective was “to dominate the world economy,” which could be achieved by operations “take control of all the routes for providing the world’s leading countries and all continents with energy resources.” “A ‘war’ against tankers in the open sea is being waged,” he added. NATO member states’ targeting of civilian shipping appears to go beyond oil shipments, and includes the targeting of a wide range of civilian exports. In November 2025, for example, U.S. special forces boarded a cargo ship in the international waters in the Indian Ocean, securing, removing and destroying civilian goods that were being shipped from China to Iran, which set a precedent for further operations of this nature in future.

Alongside the United States, European forces have played an increasingly central role in targeting Russian civilian shipping. The Belgian Armed Forces in early March landed and conducted an armed takeover of an oil tanker, the Ethera, in international waters in the North Sea, as part of a coordinated operation supported by French forces. The vessel was reported to have been exporting Russian oil. The tanker was forced to the port of Zeebrugge, and was expected to be sold and the funds appropriated by European states involved in the operation. Swede, Finland and the United Kingdom have also been involved in such operations, although France has played by far the most significant role, in line with its position as Europe’s foremost military and naval power. 

Russian and Western sources have been near unanimous that the sinking of a Russian cargo ship, the Ursa Major, off the coast of Spain in December 2024 was the result of a sabotage operation carried out by multiple NATO member states. The sources cited Western reports noting that the ship was carrying nuclear reactor components intended to support North Korea’s nuclear powered submarine program. A series of unexplained explosions on the ship resulted in it sinking in the Mediterranean, with a U.S. WC-135R reconnaissance aircraft subsequently flying over the area of the wreckage multiple times. The possibility of Western Bloc states using their global naval presences to target international shipping has been highlighted repeatedly since the mid-2010s, with the U.S. Naval Institute in 2020 having proposed hiring mercenary privateers to target Chinese civilian shipping in a similar way as an option to escalate pressure.