Ukraine-Russia war latest: French navy intercepts Russian shadow fleet tanker off coast of Sicily, says Macron

Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday that his country’s navy had intercepted an oil tanker as it transited near the coast of Sicily, in what he called his country’s latest action against the ‘shadow fleet’ Russia uses to ship oil and gas and to skirt Western sanctions.

“This new action against the shadow fleet, conducted days after a similar operation by Britain, shows Europeans’ determination,” Macron said in a post on Instagram, adding that the interception took place on Tuesday.

“We will not let the shadow fleet evade sanctions and finance the Russian war effort,” he added.

Macron posted a video showing Marines descending from helicopters onto the Deliver.

France has intercepted at least five tankers it says are part of Russia’s shadow fleet, old vessels that Russia has relied on to ship oil and gas and to skirt Western sanctions.

Moscow has called such actions illegal.

The Kremlin on Thursday denied a Wall Street Journal report that it is pressuring Belarus to support an expansion of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Ukraine expects to sign more than 160 agreements worth more than €10 billion euros over the next two days during a major recovery conference in the Polish city of Gdansk, Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Syvyrdenko said on Thursday.

Svyrydenko also said that the first 3.2 billion euro tranche from the European Union’s €90 billion loan would be announced today.

Moscow has said it is only interested in the understandings to end the war reached between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump reached at a summit in Alaska last August.

Speaking on Wednesday, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia is not willing to take any other interim decisions, or to bend to any ultimatums from the Ukrainian side.

Russian officials regularly refer to the so-called “Spirit of Anchorage” – shorthand, say analysts, for what Moscow interpreted as a possible agreement that would see Ukraine’s forces withdrawing from the remainder of Donbas they do not control in return for Moscow freezing the battle lines elsewhere. Kyiv has repeatedly made clear it will not hand over any of its territory to Russia without a fight.

“In August last year, the leaders of Russia and the United States reached a number of understandings regarding political ways out of the Ukrainian crisis. We remain committed to those understandings,” said Lavrov.

The European Union will transfer the first tranche of its promised €90 billion loan to Ukraine on Thursday, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said.

The first tranche consists of €3.2 billion, von der Leyen said at the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Gdansk, Poland, on Thursday.

Von der Leyen said a promised investment fund for the reconstruction of Ukraine, backed by the EU, France, Germany and Poland, was also “ready to go”, and could mobilise around €500 million this year.

German prosecutors said they carried out raids Wednesday in an investigation of a suspected attempt to disrupt the country’s gas supply, connected to an opaque maneuver in 2022 involving what was Russian energy giant Gazprom‘s German unit.

Federal prosecutors said police searched the premises in Berlin of a suspect and another person who isn’t under investigation, along with those of an unidentified company in Frankfurt. They said that there were no arrests.

The suspect, a Russian citizen whose name wasn’t released, is being investigated on suspicion of being an accessory to violating investment rules in Germany‘s foreign trade law and an accessory to attempted anticonstitutional sabotage, prosecutors said in a statement.

Putin is rattled and Trump needs a win – this is the chance for Ukraine and her allies to force the collapse of Russia’s army and push back against its land grab, writes world affairs editor Sam Kiley: