Influential aide to Kremlin and Chairman of the Russian Maritime Board Nikolai Patrushev has acknowledged {that a} everlasting naval presence is crucial to forestall European international locations from obstructing Russian civilian delivery’s entry to worldwide waters, stressing that the Navy is able to use drive to guard industrial vessels from Western assaults. He added that Russia is contemplating establishing a larger everlasting presence of naval property to worldwide delivery lanes to forestall NATO members from trying to grab or in any other case disrupt its service provider delivery. “If we do not give them a troublesome rebuff, then quickly the British, French and even the Balts [Baltic states] will turn into conceited to such an extent that they’ll attempt to block our nation’s entry to the seas at the very least within the Atlantic basin,” he acknowledged. “In the primary maritime areas, together with areas removed from Russia, substantial forces should be completely deployed – forces able to cooling the passion of Western pirates,” he added.
Highlighting the necessity to reply to what he known as the US’ clear “gunboat diplomacy” focusing on civilian delivery, noting precedents of such operations focusing on Venezuela and Iran, Patrushev famous that Russia’s up to date naval shipbuilding programme to 2050 can be submitted for approval quickly. Warning of an additional menace from NATO maritime actions, he additionally warned that alliance members have been planning choices to blockade the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea. “Any try at a naval blockade of our nation is totally unlawful from the standpoint of worldwide regulation, and the idea of a ‘shadow fleet’, which EU representatives brandish at each flip, is a authorized fiction,” he noticed “By implementing their naval blockade plans, the Europeans are intentionally pursuing a state of affairs of army escalation, testing the bounds of our persistence and scary lively retaliatory measures… If a peaceable decision to this case fails, the blockade will probably be damaged and eradicated by the Navy,” he added.
Patrushev’s assertion intently follows a warning from Russian Ambassador to Norway Nikolay Korchunov that NATO members are planning to impose a maritime blockade of the nation, with Western plans geared toward “limiting freedom of navigation and violates worldwide regulation norms.” Operations would contain “placing the Baltic-Arctic area on a barrack-like footing” via expanded army operations and workout routines, with NATO members additionally growing plans for “a partial or full naval blockade.” The ambassador warned that Western plans to make use of drive to limit Russian entry to worldwide waters represented a direct menace to the nation’s nationwide safety, and would drive Moscow to take countermeasures.
Important questions stay relating to the viability of deploying the Russian Navy to protect maritime commerce routes, as whereas the Soviet Union had by the Nineteen Eighties constructed up one of many world’s two premier blue water fleets, and one with a quick bettering worldwide standing, post-Soviet Russia has not laid down a single destroyer or cruiser for its fleet because the superpower’s disintegration in 1991. Though the Navy fields extremely succesful frigates and corvettes, these stay restricted of their ranges, and when working farther from Russian territory are constrained by the small sizes of their sensor suites. The Russian Navy has been constructed primarily for coastal defence roles relying closely on corvettes and coastal defence techniques that deploy among the world’s most succesful cruise missile sorts. Main Western navies’ presences throughout main commerce routes enable them to focus on Russian delivery removed from the nation’s territory, whether or not within the Mediterranean or the Indian Ocean, the place establishing a steady presence will doubtless be removed from viable for the Russian Navy at the very least till the mid-2030s.
Experiences on February 13 indicated that British Defence Secretary John Healey had met together with his counterparts from Baltic and Nordic international locations on the Munich Safety Convention to debate plans for unlawful seizures of tankers that have been transporting Russian oil for export in worldwide waters. Such takeovers of oil tankers in worldwide waters can be removed from unprecedented, with the U.S. Armed Forces having initiated an unprecedented sequence of operationsfrom late 2025 to commandeer at the very least 9 ships which were transporting Venezuelan oil for export, as a part of efforts to cripple the nation’s economic system. French forces, in the meantime, in January boarded the oil tanker Grinch in worldwide waters, forcing its proprietor to pay a tremendous of a number of million euros and endure what French authorities known as “a expensive three-week immobilisation,” with the ship launched solely on February 17.
Commenting on ongoing Western operations focusing on civilian delivery, Russian International Minister Sergey Lavrov not too long ago warned: “the U.S. goal – to dominate the world economic system – is being realised utilizing a reasonably large variety of coercive measures which can be incompatible with honest competitors.” To realize this goal, he famous, the U.S. management “wish to take management of all of the routes for offering the world’s main international locations and all continents with power assets.” “A ‘struggle’ towards tankers within the open sea is being waged,” he added. There have been indications that NATO member states’ focusing on of civilian delivery might transcend oil shipments, and embrace the focusing on of a variety of civilian exports. In November 2025, for instance, U.S. particular forces boarded a cargo ship within the worldwide waters within the Indian Ocean, securing, eradicating and destroying civilian items that have been being shipped from China to Iran, setting a major precedent. The potential of Western Bloc states utilizing their naval presences for such functions has been highlighted because the Pivot to Asia initiative within the early 2010s, with the U.S. Naval Institute in 2020 having proposed hiring mercenary privateers to focus on Chinese language civilian delivery in the same approach as an choice to escalate stress.
