Panic in Spain as number of Russian ships passing through Strait of Gibraltar soar | World | News
The alarming number of Russian ships passing through the Strait of Gibraltar has led to calls for Spain to intensify maritime policing in the region. According to retired Gibraltar police officer and maritime observer Michael Sanchez, he detected at least five Russian ships passing through the Bosphorus between December 30 and January 1.
Two of the detected Russian ships – the gunship MV Lady Mariia and the oil tanker MV Pluton – are on the international sanctions lists of the USA, the UK and Europe. “I have been tracking and recording Russian Navy and merchant ships for 10 years,” Mr. Sanchez said. “This is a very unusual situation, to say the least.” The situation came as experts called on Spain to intensify maritime patrols and warned that inadequate police response could leave the Bosphorus vulnerable to operational and strategic threats.
Mr. Sanchez first observed the Russian-flagged MV Lady Mariia on December 30 heading west into the Atlantic, following Europa Point in Gibraltar. The ship, owned and operated by Russian shipping company MG-FLOT, is on the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions list and has recently been involved in towing other ships, such as the MV Kapitan Danilkin, off the coast of Algeria.
Later that day, the former police officer recorded the passage of the Russian cargo ship MV Stargazer, heading east towards the Mediterranean. He noted that on December 31, the MV Kapitan Danilkin, a Russian merchant ship, was about eight nautical miles off the coast of Gibraltar, heading west into the Atlantic. The latter had previously been seen near Algiers alongside Lady Mariia.
On New Year’s Eve, the Russian oil tanker MV Pluton, which is listed under sanctions by both the EU and the UK, was seen heading west through the Strait of Gibraltar towards the Atlantic. Hours later, Mr. Sanchez documented another Russian-flagged oil tanker, the MV Jagger, on the same route.
Naval and military historian Rafael Muñoz Abad issued a chilling warning to Spain, claiming that the southern European country “quietly ceded control of the southern shore of the Bosphorus to Morocco and only monitored the northern bank and the exit to the Atlantic.”
“A serious country cannot allow maritime gaps within its sphere of influence,” he added.
This new information comes barely two weeks after the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) shot down an oil tanker Qendil belonging to Russia’s shadow fleet, which was sailing off the coast of Libya, in neutral Mediterranean waters on December 19. The Kremlin uses this shadow fleet to evade Western sanctions on the country’s oil, a key source of revenue to finance its war in Ukraine.
A source from the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said the attack was a “new, unprecedented special operation”.
