Eyes on Marinera oil tanker as Russia deploys naval escort
Meanwhile, a lot of attention is being given to an ageing oil tanker, formerly known as Bella 1 and renamed as Marinera, which is now going through the Icelandic territorial waters.
The vessel tanker Bella 1 at Singapore Strait, after U.S. officials say the US Coast Guard pursued an oil tanker in international waters near Venezuela. Photograph: Hakon Rimmereid/Reuters
The Russian Navy has reportedly deployed a submarine and other naval vessels to escort the tanker, previously involved in Venezuelan oil exports, amid growing speculations the US and allies are monitoring its movements.
The tanker has recently switched to Russian flag in an apparent attempt to evade scrutiny, according to US media reports.
As my colleagues explained earlier this week:
“As Bella 1, the tanker had been preparing to pick up oil from Venezuela last month before the US Coast Guard approached it on 20 December, on suspicion that its country of registration was not valid. The ship was said to be registered in Guyana.
The crew refused to allow it to be boarded and the vessel fled, during which time it re-registered as the Marinera in the Russian port of Sochi. Its tracking transponders, which had been turned off since mid-December, were restored as it headed north.
Bella 1 had been under sanctions by the US treasury since July 2024, accused by the American authorities of being involved in carrying illicit cargo for a company owned by Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese group.”
The New York Times reported that three other previously sanctioned tankers seen in Venezuelan waters have also re-flagged to Russia.
Updated at 05.10 EST
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Russia reportedly sends submarine to escort ‘shadow fleet’ tanker being pursued by US
Pjotr Sauer
Russian affairs reporter
Russia has dispatched naval assets to escort a “shadow fleet” oil tanker being pursued by the US across the Atlantic, according to reports, as tensions over the vessel escalate.
The vessel tanker Bella 1 at Singapore Strait, after U.S. officials say the US Coast Guard pursued an oil tanker in international waters near Venezuela, in this picture taken from social media in March. Photograph: Hakon Rimmereid/Reuters
The ship, formerly known as the Bella 1, has spent more than two weeks attempting to evade a US blockade of sanctions-hit oil tankers operating near Venezuela. Ship-tracking data from MarineTraffic showed the vessel nearing Iceland’s exclusive economic zone on Wednesday.
The ship began its journey in Iran and was bound for Venezuela to pick up oil, part of the so-called shadow fleet that moves oil for Russia, Iran and Venezuela despite US and allied sanctions.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Russia on Wednesday dispatched a submarine and other naval vessels to escort the tanker, which is believed to be heading for Murmansk in northern Russia.
It remains unclear where the Russian navy could rendezvous with the ship, but the oil tanker’s entry into European waters has coincided with the arrival of about 10 US military transport aircraft and several helicopters in the UK.
In December, the vessel’s crew repelled an attempted US boarding near Venezuelan waters before abruptly changing course and heading into the Atlantic.
The tanker was renamed Marinera, with its crew hastily painting a Russian flag on the hull, and it was added to an official Russian shipping registry. Moscow subsequently lodged a formal diplomatic protest demanding that Washington halt its pursuit.
The ship has been under sanctions by the US treasury since July 2024, accused by American authorities of being involved in carrying illicit cargo for a company owned by Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese group.
Russia’s state-run outlet RT earlier posted a video it said was filmed from the deck of the oil tanker, showing a US Coast Guard vessel trailing it. On Tuesday, Russia’s foreign ministry said it was monitoring the situation “with concern”.
Flight records show the Marinera appears to have been closely monitored over the last two days by US P-8 surveillance aircraft flying from RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk as it crossed the Atlantic. Any US military operation launched from the UK would be expected to involve prior coordination with British authorities.
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Jakub Krupa
Meanwhile, let’s go across to our Russian affairs reporter, Pjotr Sauer, for the latest on the oil tanker near Iceland (11:07).
ShareLive in Greenland? Share your views on Trump’s comments
We’d like to hear from people in Greenland on their views on Trump’s renewed call to take over the autonomous territory.
People protest under the slogan, “Greenland belongs to the Greenlandic people”, in Nuuk, Greenland. Photograph: Christian Klindt Soelbeck/Reuters
You can share your views below.
ShareUK’s Farage says Trump right about need for big Nato base in Greenland – but using force to seize it would be ‘outrageous’
Meanwhile, in the UK, Nigel Farage has offered his take on Trump’s plans to control Greenland, saying it would be “outrageous” for the US to seize it from Denmark.
Farage says he agrees with Starmer that the fate of Greenland must be decided by Greenland and Denmark, not the US – but sided with Trump on “some genuine security concerns” that require further presence there.
He said:
“What I will say is this. There are some genuine security concerns around Greenland and that becomes ever more relevant with a retraction of the ice caps as we head towards the North Pole. There is a strong feeling in British intelligence circles, and many in Nato, that there needs to be a significant Nato base located directly on the north of Greenland.
At the moment, it would appear that is something Greenland is not particularly keen to do.
As you know, since 2009, Greenland has been moving further and further away from Danish control and is pretty close to establishing its own level of independence and the fear is that they will fall prey to very large amounts of Chinese money and Chinese influence.
So, as ever, with things that Trump says, they may sound outrageous, and in the case of potentially using force, they are. But there is point behind it.”
More on our UK live politics blog with Andrew Sparrow:
ShareBrigitte Bardot’s funeral gets under way in Saint-Tropez
Meanwhile, over in France, Brigitte Bardot’s funeral gets under way in Saint-Tropez, with hundreds of well-wishers lining up the streets, AFP reported.
Bardot’s coffin, covered in mostly orange and yellow flowers, was carried into the town’s Notre-Dame-de-l’Assomption church at the start of the funeral service, which was covered live by French news channels.
People take pictures as the hearse with the coffin of late French film icon Brigitte Bardot passes through during a funeral procession before the funeral service at Notre-Dame-de-l’Assomption church in Saint-Tropez, France. Photograph: Alexandre Dimou/ReutersPallbearers carry the coffin of the late French film icon Brigitte Bardot at they arrive at the funeral ceremony at the Notre-Dame-de-l’Assomption church in Saint-Tropez, France. Photograph: Manon Cruz/ReutersCrowd prior to the funeral ceremony for late French actress Brigitte Bardot, in Saint-Tropez, southeastern France. Photograph: PECQUENARD-VU/SIPA/Shutterstock
Bardot’s funeral will be attended by a number of far-right figures, including the National Rally leader Marine Le Pen, reflecting the star’s polarising political views.
Reuters noted that incendiary remarks on immigration, Islam and homosexuality saw her convicted multiple times for inciting racial hatred.
As Esther Addley explained in a recent profile,
“Later-life Bardot was a passionate defender of animal rights, true, but she was also a committed, enthusiastic racist. … She also referred to gay people as “fairground freaks” and denounced #MeToo victims as “hypocritical, ridiculous, and pointless”.
…
How can history square the contradiction of Bardot, who in her long life was both a symbol of sexual emancipation and a mouthpiece for toxicity and hate?”
ShareUkraine’s national interests will be protected at Paris talks, Zelenskyy’s chief aide says
Head of Zelenskyy’s office, Kyrylo Budanov, offered a bit more detail on the talks, stressing however that “not all details of these discussions can be made public at this stage.”
“However, tangible results have already been achieved, and the work is ongoing. The national interests of Ukraine will be protected,” he stressed.
ShareUkraine-US talks to continue in Paris, Zelenskyy says
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Wednesday that he expected the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and territorial issues to be discussed by his team and US negotiators in their talks now being held in Paris, Reuters reported.
In a post on X, he said that “another session” with US envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, will take place today, the third in two days.
Zelenskyy said that he told his team to “discuss possible formats for leader-level meetings between Ukraine, other European states, and the United States.”
“Ukraine does not shy away from the most difficult issues and will never be an obstacle to peace. Peace must be dignified. And this depends on the partners – on whether they ensure Russia’s real readiness to end the war,” he said.
ShareEyes on Marinera oil tanker as Russia deploys naval escort
Meanwhile, a lot of attention is being given to an ageing oil tanker, formerly known as Bella 1 and renamed as Marinera, which is now going through the Icelandic territorial waters.
The vessel tanker Bella 1 at Singapore Strait, after U.S. officials say the US Coast Guard pursued an oil tanker in international waters near Venezuela. Photograph: Hakon Rimmereid/Reuters
The Russian Navy has reportedly deployed a submarine and other naval vessels to escort the tanker, previously involved in Venezuelan oil exports, amid growing speculations the US and allies are monitoring its movements.
The tanker has recently switched to Russian flag in an apparent attempt to evade scrutiny, according to US media reports.
As my colleagues explained earlier this week:
“As Bella 1, the tanker had been preparing to pick up oil from Venezuela last month before the US Coast Guard approached it on 20 December, on suspicion that its country of registration was not valid. The ship was said to be registered in Guyana.
The crew refused to allow it to be boarded and the vessel fled, during which time it re-registered as the Marinera in the Russian port of Sochi. Its tracking transponders, which had been turned off since mid-December, were restored as it headed north.
Bella 1 had been under sanctions by the US treasury since July 2024, accused by the American authorities of being involved in carrying illicit cargo for a company owned by Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese group.”
The New York Times reported that three other previously sanctioned tankers seen in Venezuelan waters have also re-flagged to Russia.
Updated at 05.10 EST
EU reveals weak hand as Trump raids Venezuela and threatens Greenland
Jon Henley
Europe correspondent
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The EU is in a deep, deep bind over Donald Trump’s smash-and-grab raid on Venezuela – just as it is over his repeated assertions that the US “absolutely” needs to take control of Greenland, a self-governing territory of the Kingdom of Denmark.
European and global leaders attending the Coalition of Willing’s summit in Paris, France. Photograph: Ludovic Marin/AFP/Getty Images
“If Europe acquiesces in US actions against the Maduro regime, it risks weakening the legal principles that underpin its opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” said Alberto Alemanno, a professor of EU law, neatly summing up the dilemma.
“If, however, it condemns those actions,” Alemanno said, “Europe risks alienating its primary security guarantor and straining transatlantic unity – at a moment when collective defence against Russia is especially critical.”
Europe’s leaders, who have heard Volodymyr Zelenskyy say a peace deal is “90% ready” and on Tuesday met the Ukrainian president and the US envoy Steve Witkoff in Paris to discuss US-backed postwar security guarantees for Kyiv, are desperate not to derail it.
More broadly, they are also keen to avoid antagonising a US president who has made no secret of his contempt for Europe and its leaders for fear of reviving trade tensions or undermining already withered US security guarantees to Europe generally.
The weak position this has left them in was on full display in the aftermath of Trump’s Venezuela operation. In a statement, France’s Emmanuel Macron said he would shed no tears for Maduro.
In an even more contorted response, the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, also stressed Maduro’s illegitimacy as Venezuela’s leader – and added that “legal assessment” of the US raid was “complex and requires careful consideration”.
Italy’s Giorgia Meloni went further, describing the attack as “legitimate” self-defence, while the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, resorted to the well-worn formula that the bloc was “following the situation closely”.
A few leaders, most notably Spain’s Pedro Sánchez, were more outspoken. Spain “did not recognise the Maduro regime”, the Spanish prime minister said bluntly, “but neither will it recognise an intervention that violates international law”.
But the overall response came across as circumspect and was perhaps best characterised by the fact that Trump himself gleefully endorsed the French president’s remarks, reposting them on his Truth Social network.
Was Europe’s response right? Nathalie Tocci of Rome’s Istituto Affari Internazionali argued forcefully it was not. “The more European countries act as colonies, unable and unwilling to stand up to Trump, the more they’ll be treated as such,” she said.
Dr John Cotter, a researcher in EU constitutional law at Keele University, was equally forthright. European leaders who failed to condemn the US attack “out of fear of provoking Trump’s ire” were missing two fundamental points, he said.
“First, Trump clearly doesn’t care what they think. Second, he couldn’t hold them in more contempt anyway. In fact their mealy mouthed responses … will only heighten his contempt. European leaders might as well have shown some dignity.”
There are signs, though, that European resolve may finally be hardening when it comes to Greenland – led by straight-talking Denmark.
But … while their verbal rebuff of Trump’s Greenland threats may be significantly stiffer than their responses to his Venezuela raid, no one is willing to say what actual steps the EU and its members may take were the US to attempt any kind of grab.
Mujtaba Rahman of the Eurasia Group risk consultancy warned:
“A possible US intervention in Greenland is the biggest source of risk to the transatlantic alliance, and to intra-Nato and intra-EU cohesion – arguably far greater than [the risk] presented by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
ShareHow a US takeover of Greenland would undermine Nato from within – analysis
Dan Sabbagh
Defence and security editor
The idea that one Nato country could attack another – a US invasion of Greenland – is so alien that the most famous article in Nato’s founding treaty does not distinguish clearly what would happen if two of its members were at war.
Article 5, the cornerstone of mutual protection, dictates that “an armed attack against one or more” in Europe or North America shall be considered “an attack against them all”. Simple enough if the military threat comes from Russia, but more complicated when it comes from easily the alliance’s most powerful member.
“If the US chooses to attack another Nato country, everything will stop,” Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Fredriksen, said on Monday. The military alliance may well continue to exist but its effectiveness will be called into fundamental question; the obvious beneficiary, an already aggressive Moscow.
There have already been several months of transatlantic uncertainty about Ukraine caused by two failed US efforts to force Kyiv, after the Alaska summit and again with the adoption of the Russian 28-point plan, to give up more territory as a precursor to the Kremlin even considering a ceasefire.
December’s US national security strategy hectored Europe, with its extraordinary warning that the continent faced “civilizational erasure”, partly because, within a few decades, “certain Nato members will become majority non-European”. On that extreme basis, the strategy questioned if these unnamed countries would view their alliance with the US “in the same way” as did the 12 who founded Nato in 1949.
If the diplomatic dance and the noises were not clear enough, then the re-emergence of the territorial lust for Greenland in the aftermath of the capture of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro has finally brought Nato itself sharply into focus, with the US explicitly challenging the historical sovereignty of Denmark, a fellow ally.
Nobody would realistically expect any of Nato’s 31 other members to defend Greenland militarily if the US sought to seize it, a point emphasised by Trump’s adviser Stephen Miller overnight. The real world, he added, was “governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power” – not treaties or mutual support.
Nor would they have any hope of doing so. The US has 1.3 million active military personnel, across all its services; Denmark 13,100. Nato figures show the US was expected to spend $845bn on defence in 2025, the other 31 allies a combined $559bn. The ease with which the US was able to capture Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, is a demonstration of the scale of sheer American power.
The alliance’s membership may not even change even if the US did take Greenland. There is no clear provision in the Nato treaty for expelling a country, though its preamble does commit the US and other allies “to live in peace with all peoples and all governments” and “to safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilisation of their peoples” – wording once intended to be used against a member that became communist during the cold war.
Nevertheless, one alliance member turning on another, even over an Arctic territory with a population of less than 60,000, would undermine the credibility of the 76-year-old military alliance, intended to ensure peace and mutual protection across Europe and the North Atlantic.
ShareMore than 700 flights from Amsterdam cancelled due to extreme weather
The latest update from Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport says that at least 700 flights will be cancelled today because of snow and wind.
Yesterday, Flightradar also reported on issues with the supply of de-icing fluid needed for planed to take off safely.
More than 1,000 people spent the night at Schiphol, the airport said, adding that it had set up camp beds and offered breakfast to travellers forced to sleep there. The number of cancellations is expected to rise throughout the day, AFP noted.
ShareEuropean leaders rally behind Greenland as US ramps up threats
Miranda Bryant Nordic correspondent and Dan Sabbagh
European leaders have dramatically rallied together in support of Denmark and Greenland after one of Donald Trump’s leading aides suggested the US may be willing to seize control of the Arctic territory by force.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaking at a press conference alongside European leaders in Paris, France. Photograph: APAImages/Shutterstock
Keir Starmer, the UK prime minister, Emmanuel Macron, the French president, and Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, declared that Greenland – a semi-autonomous territory of the kingdom of Denmark – “belongs to its people”, in a rare European rebuke to the White House.
“It is for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland,” the three leaders said in a statement on Tuesday, made jointly with the prime ministers of Denmark, Italy, Poland and Spain.
Later in the evening, Starmer repeated British support for Denmark at a press conference in Paris where Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, were present. “I’ve been very clear as to what my position, the position of the UK government, is,” the British leader said.
But, anxious to avoid deepening the transatlantic rift, Starmer, Macron and Merz chose to focus on making fresh security commitments to Ukraine, at an event aimed at bolstering support for Kyiv planned before the Greenland crisis broke.
The European declaration emerged in response to renewed US demands to seize control of the self-governing territory in the aftermath of the capture of Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro by the US military.
ShareMorning opening: One step forward, one step backJakub Krupa
It’s one step forward, one step back in Europe’s relations with the US.
Just hours after the Coalition of the Willing made a big step towards providing Ukraine with long-awaited security guarantees with potential UK and French troops deployments and all briefly seemed to be going in the right direction once again, the White House said that using US military is “always an option” for acquiring Greenland.
European leaders chat with US peace envoy Steve Witkoff and the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner after a press conference on Ukraine in Paris, France. Photograph: Accorsini Jeanne/ABACA/Shutterstock
The comments came just hours after a number of European allies issued a stern statement backing Denmark and Greenland, as they continue to oppose Donald Trump’s plan.
Denmark held an emergency meeting of the foreign affairs committee last night to discuss its next steps.
Overnight, the Wall Street Journal reported ($) that US state secretary Marco Rubio told lawmakers that Trump’s preferred option was to buy Greenland from Denmark, and not invade it, but I am not entirely sure if that will convince anyone in Copenhagen about the merits of the proposal.
This morning, the French foreign minister Jean-Noël Barrot said that having spoken to US Rubio last night, he was also confident that a Venezuela-like scenario would not materialise in Greenland. For now.
But he confirmed that France was working with partners on a plan on how to respond should the US act on its threat to move to take over Greenland, with the issue expected to come up at today’s ministerial meeting with his counterparts from Germany and Poland.
Separately, I will keep an eye on EU talks on the Mercosur trade deal, which is back on the table today after a delay caused by some opposition from the likes of France and Italy, as the bloc looks to boost its international trade.
Oh, and there are numerous winter disruptions across Europe, causing havoc with hundreds of flight cancellations and delays at the Schiphol airport in Amsterdam (more than 3,300 flights cancelled since last Friday, as per Flightradar24’s count) and CDG in Paris, among others.
People look at departures screens showing delayed and cancelled flights at Amsterdam Airport. Photograph: Piroschka Van De Wouw/Reuters
Large parts of Europe will see temperatures well below zero today, with -9 in Warsaw, -5 in Berlin, and -2 in Paris and Brussels.
I will bring you all the key developments here.
It’s Wednesday, 7 January 2026, it’s Jakub Krupa here, and this is Europe Live.
Good morning.