Royal Marines have boarded the Smyrtos, a Russian shadow fleet oil tanker, in the English Channel in what the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has described as the first operation of its kind by UK armed forces. The six-hour operation took place in the early hours of Sunday morning, with Marines joined by officers from the National Crime Agency and supported by the RAF.
The vessel will be held and monitored off the south coast of England as investigations continue, the MoD said.
Royal Marines Board Smyrtos After Helicopter Assault
In video footage shared by the MoD, armed personnel can be seen boarding the vessel by fast-roping from a helicopter. Further footage shows them conducting searches of cabins while NCA officers inspect paperwork on board.
Al Carns, who resigned as armed forces minister earlier this week, told the BBC the operation would have involved armed forces personnel ‘flying low level over the sea, rearing up before the ship, fast roping onto the ship, securing it and then taking it into our territorial waters’. He added that now the UK had performed its first boarding of a Russian shadow fleet vessel, ‘we’re probably going to see more, should the opportunities present themselves’.
The operation was supported by aircraft from the Maritime Air Group, an RAF P-8 aircraft, as well as HMS Sutherland and HMS Ledbury. It was conducted in close co-ordination with the French, the MoD said.
The Smyrtos and Russia’s Shadow Fleet
According to tracking website MarineTraffic, the Smyrtos sails under a Cameroon flag and was at anchor off the coast of Weymouth. BBC Verify found the vessel began its journey on 5 June from Russia’s Ust-Luga port, an oil terminal near St. Petersburg, before crossing west into the Channel on Saturday.
The vessel was sanctioned in July 2025 and has since changed its name from Myrtos to Smyrtos, as well as the flag it sails under, twice.
Russia has been operating a shadow fleet of tankers to evade international sanctions imposed on its oil exports. The MoD said the fleet of more than 700 vessels is responsible for carrying 75% of Russia’s sanctioned oil and provides a critical lifeline for the Kremlin. The UK has sanctioned more than 500 vessels. Those sanctions ban ships from entering UK ports and prohibit British firms and individuals from providing financial, insurance, or brokerage services to ships that supply or deliver Russian oil.
Until Sunday, according to Reuters, Britain’s involvement in efforts to stop the vessels had been limited to supporting French and US operations. The prime minister announced in March that British armed forces were ‘now able to board sanctioned vessels that are passing through our waters’.
Political Response to the Interception
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said: ‘This successful operation delivers yet another blow to Russia and reminds those fuelling Putin’s war in Ukraine that we will not let them hide.’
Attorney General Richard Hermer said: ‘This government made clear that we would pursue Russia’s shadow fleet under the full force of international law.’ The government has said it is targeting Russia’s oil revenues to ‘choke off funding for Russia’s war machine’ in Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked the UK for ‘taking this important step against Russia’s oil fleet’, writing on X that Europe ‘urgently needs to take legislative steps to enable not only the detention of tankers and restrictions on oil shipments, but also the confiscation of the oil they carry’.
French President Emmanuel Macron noted that on 1 June his country’s military had intercepted a sanctioned oil tanker suspected of being part of Russia’s shadow fleet, with UK support including a British helicopter.
The interception comes against a backdrop of political turbulence over defence spending. John Healey resigned as defence secretary on Thursday, warning that the level of military spending proposed by Sir Keir ‘falls well short’ of what is needed. Carns also resigned as armed forces minister, saying the Defence Investment Plan was ‘neither transformative enough nor sufficiently funded’.
Shadow defence secretary James Cartlidge said the MoD needed as much as £28bn in extra funding over the next few years, adding that cutting welfare had to be ‘a big part of it’. Opposition leader Kemi Badenoch paid tribute to the ‘brave’ military personnel and said she supported the government ‘in standing with Ukraine’.
The Defence Investment Plan is set to be published before the Nato summit next month.
