The seizure of the oil tanker Marinera in the North Atlantic—carried out by the United States with British support—is being watched far beyond Venezuela’s waters. U.S. forces boarded and seized the Russian-flagged vessel—formerly known as the Bella 1—on Wednesday, after a weeks-long pursuit across the Atlantic. While Washington described the operation as lawful sanctions enforcement, Moscow has called it piracy. But in the view of retired Lithuanian officer Col. Vaidotas Malinionis, the bigger story is what it signals about enforcement in international waters. After being hit by sanctions, Moscow has spent years searching for workarounds, Malinionis said. The “shadow fleet is one of the tools… to avoid sanctions,” he added, describing a network of vessels that shift flags and routes to keep oil moving. For Malinionis, the Marinera case stands out because it suggests a new willingness by the U.S. to act. “International waters are no longer a safe haven for sanctions evasion,” he said. He argued that Russia’s response has been strikingly limited. “It’s actually the first time… Russia’s ship was taken by force and Russia’s response was total zero,” Malinionis said. In his assessment, that matters because Russian naval posturing has often been enough to deter action. From ambiguity to enforcement Malinionis linked the seizure to a wider shift in Western thinking—including recent actions against vessels suspected of operating in legal “gray zones.” “Those incidents… mark a shift,” he said, “from deterrence by ambiguity to deterrence by enforcement.”
