MOSCOW, December 27. /TASS/. Escorting Russian trade ships with Navy ships could make it possible to avoid the incidents similar to the apprehension of the Eagle S tanker by the Finnish Coast Guard, says Alexander Stepanov, military expert and program director at the Academy of Political Sciences, senior researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Latin American studies.
"Apparently, there is only one way out - to escort our and friendly ships by Navy ships. But even in this case, no one can guarantee that there will be no provocations by the impertinent and reckless young NATO member states. Maybe, such incidents actually hide a design for a consecutive escalation. Because an attack on a military ship is casus belli, it always has been. For example, in 1898, the explosion of the USS Maine in Havana caused a war between the United States and Spain," Stepanov said.
According to the expert, Helsinki received a command to carry out such provocation from Washington to carry out a series of provocation no Baltic sea routes against the Russian trade fleet in order to block the regional trade logistics and to let NATO assume total control over the waters.
"The same logic applies to the Denmark’s recently announced plans to prohibit the passage of Russian tankers through its waters ‘on the EU’s order,’ which is a direct violation of the 1857 Copenhagen Treaty and the 1982 UN Convention on the law of the sea. However, NATO has long had little interest in the legal aspects and details of the strait regulations, it seems, and they will proceed exclusively in the logic of force pressure and blocking of maritime transport corridors," Stepanov underscored.
The expert believes that NATO intends to lock the Kaliningrad enclave, to lock the Russian trade fleet in Neva estuary and to simultaneously block the Leningrad naval base.
Previously, Reuters reported that the Finnish coast guard arrested an oil tanker travelling under the Cook Islands flag over suspicion of involvement in the damage of the Estlink 2 underwater cable, as well as two other cables connecting Estonia and Finland. Stepanov noted that a Chinese tanker that travelled on the same route was not detained.