Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova’s comment on the detention of the Tagor vessel on the high seas by French military forces

2 June 2026 00:01

870-02-06-2026

On May 31, French military forces, with support from the United Kingdom, intercepted and detained the Tagor – a vessel sailing from the Russian port of Murmansk to Cameroon with virtually no cargo on board – on the high seas, some 400 nautical miles west of Brittany, on the alleged grounds that it was flying a false flag.

The Russian Embassy in France has demanded that Paris provide full details of the circumstances surrounding the detention and is taking comprehensive steps to protect the Russian nationals among the crew.

France has sought to justify its actions by invoking Article 110 of the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which allows for the inspection of a vessel on the high seas if it “has no nationality.” This justification is without foundation.

The French authorities’ claims that their actions were consistent with international law is yet another example of European legal nihilism and the selective rewriting of norms to suit their ends. International maritime law permits a warship to stop and, in strictly limited circumstances, inspect a vessel on the high seas. However, the power to forcibly divert a vessel from the high seas – a maritime space where unfettered freedom of navigation applies – and escort it to a port in the warship’s home country is not provided for under any international treaty.

This is without even mentioning President Macron’s references to so-called “international” sanctions that the Tagor allegedly violated – which, we are told, caused the vessel to be redirected to a French port. Let us be clear: only sanctions approved by the UN Security Council are truly international. The illegal unilateral restrictive measures adopted by Europeans exist as “international” only in the imagination of the Franco-British pirate tandem. The contradiction between such “sanctions” and international law has been repeatedly noted by the UN General Assembly.

We would also remind our European colleagues that vessels operating in their interests routinely fly flags of convenience. If the French persist in turning their efforts against such vessels on the high seas, where freedom of navigation prevails, it may prove costly for global commercial shipping.