Maritime war spills west

A Russian frigate just escorted two sanctioned oil tankers through the English Channel, one of the busiest shipping lanes on earth, while British ships and aircraft watched them pass on April 8. The escort ship was the Admiral Grigorovich, and the tankers were identified as Enigma and Universal. (royalnavy.mod.uk) (novayagazeta.eu) (navylookout.com) That is a different picture from the early Black Sea phase of the war, when Ukraine’s sea drones hunted Russian warships near Crimea and pushed much of Russia’s fleet away from the western Black Sea. Now Russian naval power is showing up beside commercial tankers far from that battlefield, in waters used every day by Europe’s insurers, traders, and port authorities. (abcnews.com) (foreignpolicy.com) The ships in question are part of what officials and analysts call Russia’s shadow fleet, a loose armada of aging tankers that move oil with murky ownership, shifting flags, and opaque insurance to get around sanctions imposed after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Britain announced in March that it was ready to detain or seize sanctioned Russian-linked vessels, but a naval escort turns a customs-style enforcement problem into a military one. (novayagazeta.eu) (navylookout.com) The Kremlin did not deny the escort. Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on April 9 that Russia had the right to defend its interests against what he called “piracy,” which is Moscow’s way of saying it may use warships to shield sanctioned merchant traffic from interference. (novayagazeta.eu) (yahoo.com) At the other end of the Mediterranean, the same shipping war is now touching Libya. Two Libyan officials told The Associated Press that Ukrainian operatives in western Libya used a military facility in Tripoli to launch a March 3 sea-drone strike on the Russian-flagged tanker Arctic Metagaz, which was carrying 61,000 tons of liquefied natural gas near Maltese waters. (abcnews.com) All 30 crew members were rescued, but the Arctic Metagaz was badly damaged, drifted off Libya, and later became difficult to tow in rough weather. Russia blamed Ukrainian sea drones, and the report suggests the maritime fight has expanded from the Black Sea into the central Mediterranean and North Africa. (abcnews.com) (rfi.fr) Britain is also talking much more openly about the underwater side of this contest. Defence Secretary John Healey said on April 9 that British forces and allies, including Norway, tracked an Akula-class attack submarine and two specialist submarines from Russia’s Main Directorate for Deep Sea Research for more than a month near critical cables and pipelines in the North Atlantic. (reuters.com via usnews.com) (royalnavy.mod.uk) Those specialist submarines matter because undersea cables are the plumbing of the global economy. Banks, cloud services, energy companies, and governments all rely on fiber-optic lines and pipelines laid across the seabed, and a vessel that can map or tamper with them can create chaos without firing a missile at a port. (reuters.com via usnews.com) (breakingdefense.com) The Royal Navy’s own account shows how constant this traffic has become. Between March 29 and April 7, HMS Mersey, HMS Somerset, HMS St Albans, RFA Tideforce, Wildcat helicopters, and allied Belgian, French, and Dutch units were repeatedly tasked to shadow Russian ships and a surfaced Kilo-class submarine moving through the Channel and North Sea. (royalnavy.mod.uk) Put those pieces together and the map changes. A war that started with missile strikes on Odesa and drone attacks around Crimea now reaches the English Channel, Libyan waters, and the cable routes north of Britain, which means shipowners and insurers have to price not just sanctions risk but the chance that warships, drones, and submarines show up on the same route. (foreignpolicy.com) (abcnews.com) (royalnavy.mod.uk)