France boards tanker it says is linked to Russian shadow fleet in Mediterranean

By John Irish, Marc Leras and Gianluca Lo Nostro

PARIS, March 20 (Reuters) - The French Navy seized an oil tanker on Friday in the Western Mediterranean that President Emmanuel Macron said belonged to Russia's shadow fleet, a network of vessels that enables Moscow to export oil despite Western sanctions.

Local officials told Reuters earlier on Friday that the navy had boarded a Mozambique-flagged vessel named Deyna that was suspected of flying a false flag. The ship had been sailing from the Russian port of Murmansk.

The operation was carried out with British allies, the French Mediterranean prefecture said.

Russia, which has had increasing international sanctions imposed on it over its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, did not immediately comment on the tanker's seizure. It has previously called the ​seizure of ⁠its tankers or vessels carrying its cargoes an act of piracy.

At the prosecutor's request, the vessel was escorted to an anchorage point for further inspection, the French military said.

"These ships, which circumvent international sanctions and violate the law of the sea, are war profiteers," Macron wrote in a post on X. "They seek to reap profits and finance Russia's war effort."

It was the second such interception by France in recent months. In January, France stopped the oil tanker Grinch between the southern coast of Spain and the northern coast of Morocco on suspicion that it was part of the Russian shadow fleet.

The French navy assisted Belgium in a third operation earlier in March.