Oil tankers theme
Looks like an excellent opportunity for Ukraine to improve relations with the Trump administration by inviting their secretary of war to a sea drone test run.
Trump: The U.S. has seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi later wrote on X that the oil tanker had been under U.S. sanctions for several years because it had been used to smuggle oil from Venezuela and Iran.
The seizure is a clear escalation of U.S. pressure on Venezuela, but not of the military kind that many had expected, says SVT's Latin America correspondent Tigran Feiler. – Now it turned out to be something else. They are going after an oil tanker, but of course it is a strong signal, not least to a country like Venezuela where 90 percent of the economy is based on oil.
The country's authoritarian president Nicolás Maduro did not mention the oil tanker when he spoke at a mass rally in the capital Caracas later in the day. He did, however, assure that Venezuela is "ready to knock the teeth out of the American empire if necessary," reports the news agency AP. Watch the segment on SVT Nyheter.
Ukraine: New attack on tanker in the Black Sea. Ukrainian sea drones have taken out yet another tanker that is part of Russia's so-called shadow fleet. This reports a Ukrainian source according to the news agency Reuters.
The ship, the Gambia-flagged Dashan, was reportedly attacked while traveling through Ukraine's economic zone in the Black Sea on its way to the Russian port of Novorossiysk. According to Reuters' source, the oil tanker was moving at top speed with its transponders turned off. Ukrainian Suspilne also reports on the incident.
At the end of November, two other tankers were taken out by fires and explosions off the coast of Turkey while heading toward Russia. Both were suspected to be part of the shadow fleet, reported SVT at the time. See the article on SVT News.