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By John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with [2]
For the time being the Trump Administration and its allies conduct their war against Russia on the high seas, outside defended territorial waters, against ship targets which are unarmed, threaten no resistance. This is piracy, effective if the sight of the skull-and-bones flag triggers fear, shock, immediate surrender.
In the Caribbean against Venezuela, President Donald Trump is displaying an enormous naval force: “the largest Armada ever assembled in the history of South America,” he tweeted on December 16 [3]. “It will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before”.
Then the US Coast Guard announced that it lacks the men and firepower to board and seize the Bella-1 oil tanker, owned by China and heading to Venezuela to load crude oil for delivery to Chinese refineries. “The days-long pursuit [of the Bella-1] highlights the mismatch between the Trump administration’s desire to seize sanctioned oil tankers near [sic] Venezuela and the limited resources of the agency that is mainly carrying out operations, the Coast Guard,” a US official announced on December 23 [4]. “A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Coast Guard officials on the [USS Gerald] Ford were from a Maritime Security Response Team and at the time too far from Bella 1 to carry out a boarding operation.”
The next day, December 24 [5], Trump officials lowered their flag to half-mast. “The White House has ordered U.S. military forces to focus almost exclusively on enforcing a ‘quarantine’ of Venezuelan oil for at least the next two months, a U.S. official told Reuters, indicating Washington is currently more interested in using economic rather than military means to pressure Caracas.” ‘While military options still exist, the focus is to first use economic pressure by enforcing sanctions to reach the outcome the White House is looking (for),’ the official said on Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity.”
In the Mediterranean, the cover story for drone attacks on tankers operating for the Russian oil trade is that it’s the Ukrainians at work, reportedly firing from 1,500 kilometres to the north.
More certainly, the small drone detonation [6] on the deck of the Qendil southwest of Crete on December 19 was fired from Tympaki, a Greek Coast Guard base on Crete armed with Israeli and NATO drones and using US and NATO satellite and live airborne electronic surveillance. Although claimed by the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) , this was an act of war by the Greek Government against Russia – and it failed. The Qendil has continued under its own power through the Aegean to Nemrut Bay, Turkey [7]. Omani-flagged, with Indian management and a Russian master [8], the Qendil was empty at the time of the attack.
This is a war between the 3,300-tanker alternative fleet (alt-fleet) versus a mainstream fleet of about 5,000 vessels [9] in which the world oil tanker market has been cut in half by the international war between Russia, China, India, Iran, Venezuela and North Korea on one side, and the US, the NATO allies, Israel, and Japan on the other.
At sea, for the time being, this is a war of provocation, profiteering, and face-saving short of shooting. The more time that goes by, however, the stronger the Venezuelan government grows in resistance, and the closer to capitulation the US and NATO-backed regime in Kiev.
For a backgrounder on this war at sea and its Napoleonic precedent of two hundred years ago, read this [10]:
[11]Left, the Napoleonic ambition for the Trump-NATO blockade of Russian trade at sea; source: https://johnhelmer.net/the-napoleon-mistake-at-sea/ [10] Right, Napoleon in July 1815, after his battlefield defeat at Waterloo, on the deck of HMS Bellerophon enroute to exile and death on St. Helena island.
For a detailed review of the US attacks on tankers in the Caribbean during December, and for maritime industry counts of the size of the alt-fleet – the “phantom”, “shadow”, “ghost”, “black” fleet – read this report by El Pais in NATO-allied Spain, published on December 22, 2025 [12]:
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[14]Source, top: https://english.elpais.com/international/2025-12-22/the-open-war-against-the-oil-phantom-fleet.html [12]; below, https://www.lloydslist.com/LL1155952/Flag-hopping-shadow-fleet-starts-to-settle-in-Russia [15]
As sources for the maritime fleet war, Reuters and Bloomberg should be discounted as they are both New York-based propaganda platforms for disinformation. GCaptain, a leading US maritime industry publication, is a source for what the commercial tanker interests are saying, and also the US shipyards, US Coast Guard, and US Navy [16]. Splash247.com [17] is a little more independent because it is Asian owned.
Lloyds List, based in London and owned by an international private equity investor [18], has traditionally been the mouthpiece for the shipping oligarchs of London, Athens, Oslo, and New York; British shipping brokers; and the maritime insurers. Richard Meade, a longtime Lloyds List reporter, acknowledged on December 23 that the “shadow fleet” game is almost up, as the Kremlin has begun to curtail false flagging and offshore registrations for the movement of Russian oil cargoes, and instead put them on board tankers under the Russian flag, Russian insurance, and armed Russian protection [15].
Listen now to Chris Cook leading the hour-long Gorilla Radio broadcast [12] on Christmas Eve, Canada time.
[19]Source: https://gradio.substack.com/p/gorilla-radio-with-chris-cook-john-246 [20] The broadcast archive can also be heard on Telegram at https://t.me/gorillaradio2024 [21]
For more than twenty years Chris Cook has been producing Gorilla Radio [22] from Victoria, British Columbia. For the archive, plus introductions to Canada’s Resistance and the history as it took shape and fought the battles that had to be fought, click here [23].
Note: The lead image is of the Panama-flagged, Chinese-owned tanker Centuries which was carrying Venezuelan crude oil to China. It was boarded and seized by US forces on December 20 [24] (local time). When asked for the Chinese Government’s response, Lin Jian of the Foreign Ministry in Beijing said [25]: “By arbitrarily seizing other countries’ vessels, the U.S. has seriously violated international law. China stands against unilateral illicit sanctions that lack basis in international law or authorization of the UN Security Council, and against any move that violates the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, infringes upon other countries’ sovereignty and security, and constitutes unilateralism and bullying. Venezuela has the right to independently develop mutually beneficial cooperation with other countries. We believe Venezuela’s position of defending its legitimate rights and interests has the understanding and support of the international community.”
[26]Source: https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/xw/fyrbt/202512/t20251222_11780748.html [25]