Brussels’ Pirates

How a Libya Peace Mission Became a Weapon Against Russian Shipping

Dear readers and subscribers,

I've been tracking the EU's interdiction campaign against Russia's so-called "shadow fleet" for several months now, and along the way I've compiled and continually updated a list of the Russian-linked vessels being targeted, sanctioned, or boarded. Regular readers will recall my earlier piece on this pattern (Read below).

The August 2 seizure of the Toa Payoh near Sicily is the latest and most aggressive escalation yet, and it's worth returning to the subject with the full picture now in view.

Dear readers and subscribers,

Something is rotten in the Mediterranean, and it wears an EU flag.

On August 2, an Italian missile frigate, backed by a Greek warship and Polish air support, moved to seize a tanker called Toa Payoh near Sicily. Its captain’s alleged offense: refusing to let an armed European boarding party onto his ship. It was the latest and most dramatic episode in a campaign that the European Union insists on calling law enforcement, while Moscow, with considerably more justification, calls it piracy.

If you would like to support our work and efforts in creating meaningful and engaging content, please consider supporting us! We are now on PAYPAL

Many Thanks to 🐺The Wise Wolf for creating the logotype!

The operation carrying out these seizures, EUNAVFOR MED Irini, was never built for this.

When the EU Council launched it in March 2020, its mandate (granted under the authority of the UN Security Council) was to enforce the arms embargo on Libya, choking off weapons flows to the warring factions of that country’s civil war.

It was already a problematic mission.

In June 2020, Irini attempted to board a Tanzanian-flagged cargo ship escorting Turkish military equipment to Tripoli, which nearly triggered a shooting incident between NATO members when a Turkish frigate locked its fire-control radar onto a French warship three times.

That was the mission’s original, UN-sanctioned purpose—and even then it barely held together.

This year, without any new Security Council authorization, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas simply redirected Irini’s warships at a different target: Russia.

At a defense ministers’ meeting in Nicosia on June 8, Kallas made the pivot explicit, casting the seizure of civilian tankers as a tool to choke off financing for Russia’s operations in Ukraine.

The rules of engagement she authorized have never been published, citing secrecy, which comes as a striking omission for an operation the EU insists is grounded in law.

Since May, Irini’s ships have carried out ten inspections with captains’ consent and two forced boardings by helicopter-landed troops. On July 20, Kallas announced on social media that EU naval personnel had boarded the tanker MV South Star in international waters, declaring the bloc was “increasing the pressure on the Russian shadow fleet.”

Kaja Kallas post on X - July 20, 2026

Neither “shadow fleet” nor the 600+ vessels EU sanctions list corresponds to any category recognized under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which governs the freedom of navigation Brussels is now overriding by force. [NOTE: Read my previous article on the latest sanctions package below. —JBM]

Russia’s Permanent Representative to the OSCE, Dmitry Polyansky, made that argument directly to the organization’s Permanent Council on June 11. Irini, he noted, was authorized to stop arms flows to Libya under a UN mandate, not to police sanctions Moscow never agreed to and international law does not recognize.

What Kallas calls enforcement, he argued, is in substance what he bluntly termed “EU-sponsored state piracy.”

President Vladimir Putin addressed the pattern of interdictions on July 26, telling a meeting of Russian fleet commanders that vessels carrying Russian civilian cargo were effectively being treated as targets for pirates and that Russia would respond carefully, within the bounds of international maritime law, but decisively.

The message was unambiguous: the boardings will not go unanswered indefinitely.

What the Toa Payoh incident makes clear is the course of action.

A mission originally created to keep weapons out of a North African civil war is now deploying missile frigates and military aircraft against unarmed merchant vessels, based on a sanctions list that has no grounding in international law and under rules of engagement that its own designers will not disclose.

The EU is welcome to sanction whatever trade it likes within its own jurisdiction. Seizing ships on the high seas because Brussels dislikes their cargo is a different matter entirely, and it bears a name older than the European Union itself.