Putin Mocks Starmer With Warship in Channel
Vladimir Putin has openly defied Sir Keir Starmer’s threat to seize sanctioned Russian vessels by sending a warship to escort them through the Channel. The Telegraph has the story.
The Admiral Grigorovich, a Black Sea fleet frigate, accompanied a pair of shadow fleet ships on Wednesday while a British naval vessel followed behind.
Positioned on the Royal Charlotte, a boat almost 10 miles from Dover, the Telegraph observed Putin’s flotilla cruising past the south coast while RFA Tideforce, a Royal Fleet Auxiliary tanker, trailed in their wake.
Last month, Sir Keir gave special forces the authority to capture the armada of rusted ships illegally ferrying oil to support Russia’s war in Ukraine, saying he would hit the shadow fleet “even harder” if they sailed through British waters. However, Britain is yet to seize a single Russian vessel.
The Prime Minister has repeatedly faced criticism regarding the state of the Royal Navy and Britain’s Armed Forces. After an Iranian-made drone hit RAF Akrotiri, HMS Dragon, Britain’s only deployable destroyer, was sent to the Middle East, but took three weeks to arrive and has already had to return to port as it suffers water supply issues.
In a speech on Saturday, Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, is expected to pile further pressure on Sir Keir, urging him to publish the long-delayed defence investment plan. She will state that there is “no plan for rearming Britain”.
Donald Trump, the US President, has previously described the Navy’s two aircraft carriers as “toys” while his War Secretary, Pete Hegseth, mocked Britain’s “big, bad Royal Navy”.
The US first stormed a Russian sanctioned oil tanker in January, prompting pledges from Western nations to seize more ships.
While the French navy has intercepted some tankers in the Mediterranean, dozens of Russian vessels are believed to have passed through the Channel since Sir Keir’s threat.
Admiral Grigorovich – a 3,620-ton frigate armed with anti-ship, cruise and surface-to-air missiles – sailed between the two 600ft tankers Universal and Enigma shortly after 9am on Wednesday as they headed west toward Plymouth.
Universal reportedly departed from the Russian port of Vysotsk on January 18th.
The Russian-flagged tanker is believed to be on a mission to deliver crude oil to bolster the Kremlin’s coffers, which are straining to fund Putin’s war machine.
In September, she was outlawed in British waters for attempting to “destabilise Ukraine or undermine or threaten” Kyiv by exporting oil from Russia to fund its invasion.
Meanwhile, the Cameroon-flagged Enigma was bound for Turkey, having left port at Primorsk, north of St Petersburg, on March 29th. She was sanctioned by the UK in May last year for pumping money to the Kremlin.
On Wednesday, the Telegraph identified two other sanctioned Russian tankers – the Gambia-flagged Desert Kite and the Kousai from Sierra Leone – sailing through the Channel in the opposite direction, having entered on Tuesday evening.
Andrew Fox, a retired major in the Parachute Regiment, said the Russians were seeking to humiliate Britain.
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It’s not too difficult to humiliate Britain, Starmer and his cronies do it on a daily basis.
Intentionaly it seems.
Russia are defending themselves from international piracy.
A pirate is by definition a non-government actor.
One man’s pirate is another man’s privateer depending on whose version of international law you are abiding by.
I don’t quite understand the point of the remark but: A privateer used to be a private ship owner with a government authorization to capture merchant ships of some hostile power during a war. This form of naval warfare was abolished by mutual consent in the 19th century.
The point of the remark is that both pirates and privateers are private ships raiding other ships and ports for personal gains but the privateer did so with a letter of marque from a Government. There was little to differentiate some English privateers from the navy at the time such as Drake, Raleigh and others regarded now as our naval heroes. Most victims of privateers did not distinguish and regarded them as pirates all the same. In a similar manner only Ukraine is currently at war with Russia, so any vessel seizing a Russian vessel could be regarded as either, if you don’t recognise the authority of one side’s embargo and right to seize. So, as I say, one man might regard our navy as operating as a Government approved pirate.
Drake, Raleigh and the others were pirates while they were operating in Spanish America because there was no war between England and Spain at that time. When war with Spain had officially commenced, they became part of the regular English Navy and helped to repulse the Armada. Privateers don’t figure in this story at all.
Unless you’re much older that can be reasonably assumed (a lot more than 500 years) you don’t know more about what “most victims of privateers believed” than I do, namely, nothing.
This bit of intentional historical confusion notwithstanding, no warship officially commissioned by some state can ever be a pirate because it’s not private vessel operating without govermment authorization. If a ship of the Royal Navy seized a Russian vessel, this would be an act of war and not piracy.
What amazes me is that some people still take anything Starmer says at face value. The Russians are intelligent enough to have worked that one out.
…and the Russians are prepared to show the world that they have worked out that Starmer and the British Armed Forces are pathetic. Because they know everyone else knows that, especially the British. They risk literally nothing by defying Starmer’s little statements.
That’s not so much a problem of the armed forces being pathetic but of forcing them to be used in a certain way. By sending a frigate alongside the tankers, Putin made sure that Starmer would need to run the risk of a ship – ship engagement if he actually meant to do something. But even in the unlikely case that the Starm actually had to guts to try, the Milied would certainly veto this because of the associated CO₂ emissions.
We,ll it seems the RN simply could not have deployed an operational frigate to send; the Tidewater is Royal Fleet Auxiliary with no combat capability
Sending a single frigate to “tail” the Russian ships would have been entirely as pointless as sending a tanker.
BTW, as can be determined without much difficulty, the tanker is part of a group of four ships, the two type 23 Frigates HMS Somset and HMS St Albans and the offshore patrol vessel HMS Mersey. There’s doubtlessly more capability available than this. But for as long as all the ships are ordered to do is show off to pretend that the government is doing something, they could all as well have been left in port. And The Starm® isn’t going do to anything beyond that¹.
¹ For as long as there are no ships carrying British citizens broadcasting demands to deport illegal immigrants and threats to sink their boats. I bet this would cause a strong reaction very quickly.
Since successive governments have decided that we don’t need a Navy we can sack all the Admirals.
Except we do need a Navy, far more than the traitorous Uniparty politicians we have had the misfortune to have been lumbered with.
So Russia quite visually thumbs the nose at the unbelievably useless Starmer and co., by defying his statement while the equally useless Healey (who doesn’t even know how many vessels the Navy has) brags about an anti-submarine operation that in truth can never be proved. And what stunning display of military might did we have in the channel, a sodding RFA tanker for god’s sake. How many more ways can this rotten shower be publicly humiliated, destroying our reputation across the globe.
This incident highlights the purpose and value of Trump’s crass, hyperbolic rhetoric, distasteful as it might seem to the urbane classes.
Putin knew Starmer was never going to back up his threat. Not because the UK doesn’t have a strong navy. (It’s strong enough to confront a tanker and two frigates.) But because Starmer has let everyone know that he is a technocrat who solves issues with lawyers and officials in offices. He has no ability to confront thugs.
Trump does. He’s got a lot of thug in him and so knows how to deal with other thugs. He gets into the mud and gets unpleasant, necessary shit done while people who think they are better and more sophisticated than him look on in horror, clutching their pearls.
The answer is quite simple.
We just shut the English Channel and/or charge tolls.. It’s ours by name anyway
Need to get some expert advice on how to do it though – as it seems we cannot even stop rowing boats.
Best ask Iran.
Putin will pay us in illegal migrants
What’s the point of sending a replenishment tanker on such a mission? Supply the Russians with fuel in case they ran out of it while still in the channel to make sure that Starmer won’t have to act?
Exactly – worse than pointless… the scary bit is, it’s clearly all they had…
As written in another comment: The tanker is part of a group of four ships, the others being two frigates and an offshore patrol vessel presently tasked with “showing off in the channel.” A tanker can do this as well as an actual warship.
🎵”Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves…”
Time to retire that bit of patriotism.
Submarines too – but we are apparently watching them
UK says Russia ran submarine operation over cables and pipelines https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cre13qn9z7do
Putin should really send goldfishs painted white-blue-red. I bet the navy would be really good at watching these, too.
:->
If we cannot defend ourselves from an invasión of r@p€y jihadists in rubber inflatables, I think it is unlikely that the Russian Navy will take any notice of the sad remnants of the Royal Navy
To be fair, the UK government doesn’t really want to stop the rubber inflatables.
Hasn’t Rodney noticed that his friend Donald took sanctions off Russian oil and gas after the Straits were blocked. They are the second biggest producer after the US and other countries needed their supply. Maybe the Yanks didn’t tell him because they knew he wouldn’t be able to do anything with his toy navy.
Stop the boats!
“…said the Russians were seeking to humiliate Britain.”
Too late!
Successive Governments over the last 30 years have done that.