The Right of Helicopter Landing: Article 92 and the Fate of Freedom of Navigation
On May 31, 2026, in the Atlantic, more than four hundred nautical miles from the nearest land, special forces descended from a French helicopter onto the deck of a tanker. The vessel was sailing from Murmansk. Not the Gulf of Aden with pirate boats, not a counter-terrorism operation off the coast of Somalia, but the open ocean, an ordinary commercial vessel, carrying Russian oil. The French president called it an act of "in accordance with international law"In Moscow, it's international piracy. And formally, where the convention is silent, both are right.
Tagor: more than four hundred miles from shore
Tanker Tagor They were taken to Brest under the protection of French and British ships. The French Ministry of Defense released a video of the landing: footage clearly filmed for public display, not for the record. That was the entire point of the operation. They wanted to seize one ship and intimidate the others.
Six months earlier, a chain of events had been established. In December 2025, the Finns detained a cargo ship. Fitburg, sailing from St. Petersburg, on suspicion of damaging an underwater cable in the Gulf of Finland: formally, the case is a case of sabotage, although the vessel was Russian. In January, as part of the blockade of Venezuelan oil, the Americans intercepted a tanker off Iceland that had previously flown under the Russian flag; it was carrying Venezuelan oil in defiance of sanctions. In May, the Swedish Coast Guard boarded a tanker off Trelleborg. Jin Hui under the Syrian flag and arrested the captain. Then – Tagor in the open ocean.
Four episodes, four countries, four different legal pretexts: sabotage, Venezuelan sanctions, a counterfeit flag, EU sanctions. The pretexts are different, but the vector is the same. It no longer seems like a coincidence; a pattern is emerging. Over the past year and a half, the "shadow" fleet" has gone from being a line on the sanctions list to being the target of a helicopter operation, all without a single new international treaty.
Article 92 as a key
To understand how the seizure of a vessel on the high seas fits in with international law, one must look at the flag. TagorThe tanker was sailing under the flag of Madagascar, but, according to the French side, it simultaneously displayed a Cameroonian registration. On paper, this is a minor detail, a registration formality. The entire legal structure of the seizure rests on this formality.
Article 92 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) states a simple thing: a vessel flying two or more flags is equivalent to a vessel without nationality, stateless vesselAnd the right to search such a vessel on the high seas applies broadly, without a short list of exceptions like piracy or the slave trade. A flagless vessel has no state protector, and anyone can exercise jurisdiction over it. Proving (or declaring) dual flagging means lifting the vessel's sovereign immunity. It is this duality, not the forgery per se, that triggers Article 92. After this, the helicopter is already legal.
In January 2026, fourteen European countries (from Finland to France) signed a joint statement addressed to operators of shadow fleets. Its meaning is simple: a vessel that frequently changes flags, switches off its transponder, and presents questionable documents will be considered unflagged. A combination of behavioral indicators, rather than the lack of registration per se, becomes grounds for inspection. Moreover, this combination is assessed by the party intending to detain the vessel.
Stateless vessel In the classic UNCLOS, this was a narrow exception for vessels that truly belonged to no one. Now, it's a flexible category that, with due diligence, could encompass a significant portion of the global tanker fleet. Freedom of navigation, codified back in 1958, is quietly changing its nature: a universal norm is becoming a privilege that can be revoked if necessary.
History The history of war has seen similar reversals. During World War I, the British fleet blockaded Germany based on the doctrine of "continuous voyage": neutral cargo, formally bound for a neutral port, was declared contraband of war if it was expected to end up in enemy hands. Legally, this was an expansive interpretation of prize law, and contemporaries understood this. This was explained by the urgency of the moment, but the moment passed, and the interpretation became established. Expansive interpretations of maritime law generally have a nasty habit: they enter as the exception, but remain the norm.
Moscow responded predictably. The Foreign Ministry, through Maria Zakharova, described France's actions as "European legal nihilism" and the arbitrary rewriting of UNCLOS, recalling that the convention permits inspection on the high seas only in a narrow range of cases and nowhere provides for the forced escort of a vessel to the port of the detaining state. Formally, this objection is not without merit: UNCLOS indeed does not contain a procedure for forced escort to a home port. The dispute concerns the actual loopholes in the convention, and each side is exploiting them to its advantage.
Let me clarify: at the time of writing, there is no publicly detailed legal justification from the French side. The Brest prosecutor's office is conducting an investigation specifically into the flag's status; the rest has to be reconstructed from indirect evidence. But even this incomplete evidence reveals the flip side of the Russian position, which Moscow prefers not to discuss. The most straightforward way to resolve the issue of nationality is to transfer the tankers under the Russian flag itself. Jurisdiction is then indisputable, and any detention becomes a direct interstate incident. And here, tactical cover creates a far more serious strategic problem: each such tanker becomes a quasi-state asset, and its seizure an incident that will require a response not with a diplomatic note, but at the state level. Covering a vessel with a flag is easy, but then you have to somehow live with that flag, and that's an entirely different matter.
A Split Within: Rubio, the Treasury, and the Logic of the License
European helicopters in the Atlantic appear to be independent. In reality, this is a consequence of the fact that the main sanctioning player, the United States, has its hands tied.
It's easy to dismiss American policy as hypocrisy. In reality, it's not hypocrisy, but rather an attempt to sit on two chairs that are sliding apart. Washington was the one who imposed sanctions against Russian oil. But it's also the largest energy exporter, with a vested interest in keeping prices from skyrocketing. On April 17, 2026, OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control) issued a 134B General License, allowing the completion of already-initiated Russian oil deliveries. Secretary of State Marco Rubio publicly explained: the baseline is sanctions; the waivers are temporary; they would like to be rolled back. as soon as possibleIn May, the Ministry of Finance renewed the license, amid tensions around the Strait of Hormuz and the threat of a price hike.
There are two objectives, and they're not working out: squeezing Russian revenues and preventing the collapse of the global oil market. Washington is leaving loopholes, and that's why the "front line" of the fight against the shadow fleet is shifting to Europe. The EU isn't responsible for global prices and can afford to use force, which America is forced to moderate.
It's worth calling a spade a spade. French helicopters aren't a sign of independence. They're a specialization within a division of labor. The US is responsible for the financial framework of sanctions and, at the same time, ensures that the market does not collapse; the forceful work, for which Washington's hands are tied, is carried out by Europe.
Russia's Response: Changing the Flag Instead of a Strategy
In reality, Moscow has a range of reactive moves, and each one patches one hole, opening another.
Transfer of vessels to the Russian flag: approximately seventy tankers have been transferred since May 2025, with another eighty or so in preparation (note: these figures are estimates, primarily sourced through Ukrainian intelligence and industry brokers, so the accuracy is conditional). Developing domestic insurance: by the end of February 2026, approximately a third of tankers transiting the Baltic presented certificates from Russian or Russian-linked insurers. Targeted military escort: reports of Northern Fleet ships escorting vessels along the Norwegian coast. At the political level, Peskov, who called the seizure Tagor "illegal and bordering on international piracy", and the embassy in France, protecting Russian citizens in the crew.
The problem is that every measure is only half-effective. Russian insurance increases autonomy, but under EU sanctions, an insurer serves as an identification mark no worse than a flag: it makes it easier for Western law enforcement to select targets. Military escort is feasible on a case-by-case basis; systemic cover is impossible: the Russian Navy is stretched between the Black Sea, the Far East, and the North, and there's no physical means to escort every voyage from Murmansk to India. And, as already noted, transferring a flag protects the vessel at the cost of turning it into a detonator.
The idea of a grand coalition of importing and exporting countries interested in freedom of navigation outside Western sanctions remains. While logical on paper, in practice it remains mere rhetoric. In January 2026, India sharply reduced its purchases of Russian oil through its shadow fleet: the number of voyages to its ports fell almost in half. China increased its purchases, but selectively, avoiding the riskiest schemes. Neither Delhi nor Beijing is eager to accept the costs of protecting the other's logistics: access to Western finance and technology is more valuable to them than Russian discounts.
And here's a crucial detail that's often underestimated in this story. To stop maritime traffic, it doesn't necessarily have to be physically blocked. It's enough for insurers and shipowners to deem the risk excessive, and traffic will stop on its own, without a single vessel being sunk. With Russian oil, the West is already at this stage. Seizing tankers en masse isn't necessary: the seizure of one is enough to force the others to reassess the risk. Tagor Here it works as a message, and this message has more than one addressee: it is read in Delhi, Beijing, and in insurance companies' offices.
Formally, freedom of navigation hasn't been abolished. It's just that it's no longer applicable to everyone—and it's being verified, among other things, from a helicopter over the Atlantic.
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