Everyone loves a good pirate, right?

or: the hypocrisy of France

France just reminded the world that maritime piracy isn’t dead—it’s simply been rebranded as “sanctions enforcement.” On September 27, 2025, French special forces boarded the Boracay tanker in international waters, 29 miles off Saint-Nazaire, because it was deemed that this vessel transporting Russian oil was part of the notorious “shadow fleet.” Never mind that international law doesn’t recognize sanctions violations as legitimate grounds for boarding ships on the high seas. Never mind that the vessel was in international waters, not French territory. And certainly never mind that France is simultaneously Europe’s largest importer of Russian liquefied natural gas, pumping billions of euros directly into Putin’s war chest.

The shadow fleet sounds ominous until you understand what it actually means: vessels operating outside Western insurance and financing systems. These are aging tankers with opaque ownership structures, frequent flag changes, and disabled tracking systems—all designed to move Russian oil without touching Western financial infrastructure. Is this shady? Absolutely. Is it illegal under international law? No. These vessels exist precisely because Russia adapted to Western sanctions by building parallel systems. Calling them a “shadow fleet” is marketing, not legal classification. They’re the maritime equivalent of using a VPN to bypass content restrictions—annoying to Western powers, but not piracy.

France’s boarding violated the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which establishes that ships in international waters are subject exclusively to flag-state jurisdiction. Article 110 permits boarding only for piracy, slave trade, stateless vessels, or with flag-state consent. Sanctions enforcement isn’t on that list because sanctions are national policy decisions, not international law. France can enforce its sanctions in French territorial waters and ports. In international waters, France has exactly zero legal authority to board a foreign-flagged vessel for carrying Russian oil to India—regardless of how many times that vessel changed its name or flag.

French authorities charged the Boracay’s captain and first mate with “failure to provide proof of nationality” and “refusal to comply,” carrying potential one-year prison sentences and €150,000 fines. This legal gymnastics attempts to frame a sanctions enforcement action as addressing a stateless vessel, but the charade is transparent. If the vessel is genuinely stateless, any country could seize it. If it has a valid flag, France lacked jurisdiction. France essentially argued “this ship won’t tell us its flag, therefore we can board it” in international waters—a dangerous precedent that China would love to replicate in the South China Sea.

President Macron defended the action at an EU summit, claiming the shadow fleet finances “40 percent of the Russian war effort” and represents “tens of billions of euros of Russia’s budget.” He’s absolutely correct. What Macron conveniently omitted is that France finances a substantial portion of the remaining 60% through its record-breaking Russian LNG purchases. In 2024, France imported 6.3 million tons of Russian LNG valued at €2.68 billion—an 81% increase from 2023, making France the largest importer of Russian LNG in Europe. Russia is now France’s second-largest LNG supplier after the United States, providing 34% of French LNG imports.

The timeline is darkly comic: French special forces board a Russian oil tanker on September 27 while French LNG terminals offload Russian gas cargoes throughout the same month. TotalEnergies, the French energy giant, remains the largest non-Russian buyer of Russian LNG globally, maintaining 20% ownership in Yamal LNG, 10% in Arctic LNG 2, and 19.4% in Novatek. These aren’t legacy investments being wound down—they’re active partnerships that continued expanding after Russia invaded Ukraine. Ukrainian MP Andrii Zhupanyn characterized France’s role as “unconscionable support for Russia’s fossil fuels industry—on which Putin depends to finance his war.” That assessment seems generous.

Macron’s public statements showcase world-class doublespeak. He claimed France had “decreased by more than 80% the consumption of oil and gas” from Russia, dismissing remaining imports as “very marginal.” This is technically true for pipeline gas but deliberately obscures the 81% increase in Russian LNG imports. France didn’t reduce Russian energy dependency—it changed delivery methods from pipelines to tankers. Macron conflates overall gas consumption changes with Russian-specific imports, a rhetorical sleight-of-hand designed to obscure the fundamental reality: France is buying more Russian energy than ever before, just in liquefied form.

The European Union shares France’s hypocrisy. In the third year of Russia’s invasion, the EU paid €21.9 billion for Russian fossil fuels—exceeding the €18.7 billion in financial aid sent to Ukraine. Belgium spent €1.4 billion on Russian LNG while providing only €1.2 billion in military aid to Ukraine. The EU banned Russian pipeline gas and seaborne oil but deliberately left a massive loophole: no comprehensive sanctions on LNG existed until last month, when the EU finally proposed a complete ban scheduled for January 1, 2027. That’s 18 months away—plenty of time for Russia to bank tens of billions more in LNG revenues from sanctimonious European buyers.

The entire Western sanctions architecture now operates in legal and moral twilight. Shadow fleet vessels are legal adaptations to Western policy decisions. France responds by committing legally questionable interdictions in international waters while maintaining the commercial relationships that necessitate the shadow fleet’s existence. If France stopped buying Russian energy, Russia wouldn’t need shadow tankers to move it. The Boracay was carrying oil to India, not France—but it was carrying oil that markets like India’s can absorb precisely because European demand for Russian LNG keeps Russia’s energy sector profitable.

Russia hasn’t responded militarily to the Boracay seizure, but asymmetric retaliation options abound. Russia could reciprocally seize French-flagged vessels or vessels carrying French cargo in international waters, citing the precedent France just established. Moscow could expand cyber operations targeting French critical infrastructure—energy grids, financial systems, or transportation networks. France’s dependence on Russian LNG creates obvious leverage: Russia could simply cut off LNG exports to France, creating an energy crisis during winter. Russia could also target French investments in Russia, expropriating TotalEnergies’ assets in Yamal LNG and Arctic LNG 2, eliminating billions in French corporate investments.

More subtly, Russia could continue escalating harassment of French interests in Africa, where Wagner Group and Russian influence operations already operate extensively. Russia could increase support for anti-French movements in former French colonies, complicating French military operations in the Sahel. Russian intelligence services could leak damaging information about TotalEnergies’ Russian operations or French officials’ communications regarding energy policy contradictions. The disinformation possibilities alone are extensive—Russia could amplify accurate reports of French LNG purchases to undermine Western unity and expose European hypocrisy to global audiences.

The likelihood of conventional military retaliation is low—Russia won’t risk NATO escalation over a single tanker—but asymmetric responses are probable and potentially more damaging. France created a precedent for boarding vessels in international waters, handed Russia a propaganda victory by exposing sanctions hypocrisy, and opened itself to retaliation while maintaining the energy dependency that funds Russian military operations. It’s strategic incompetence wrapped in moral posturing.

The fiscal reality makes France’s Boracay boarding particularly absurd. France is drowning in debt at 113% of GDP, with deficits running at 5.8%—nearly double EU limits. 2 governments collapsed already, and 5 prime prime ministers were churned through. All trying to implement austerity budgets worth €44-60 billion in cuts. Credit rating agencies downgraded France below Spain, with Fitch warning of “no clear prospect” for debt stabilization. Finance Minister Eric Lombard warned in August 2025 that IMF intervention “is a risk that is in front of us” if debt remains uncontrolled. Interest payments consume €58 billion annually, projected to exceed €100 billion by 2029.

In this fiscal environment, France cannot afford to cut off cheap Russian LNG. The €2.68 billion spent on Russian gas in 2024 keeps energy prices low enough to prevent another wave of yellow vest protests. When over one million French citizens mobilized against austerity, when 98% of pharmacies closed in protest, the message was clear: French society has reached its breaking point. Cutting Russian LNG would spike energy prices, require a €24+ billion tariff shield France cannot afford, and trigger social explosions that would bring down any government. France needs Russian gas to keep its economy from imploding—and Putin knows it.

So what does France do? Commit maritime piracy, violating UNCLOS principles that have governed maritime law for decades. This is strategic incompetence of the highest order. France picked a fight it cannot win with a country it desperately needs, all for a photo op at an EU summit.
It is economically trapped, and the Boracay stunt accomplished nothing except revealing—yet again—that Western sanctions enforcement is selective, hypocritical, and ultimately ineffective at its stated goal of defunding Russia’s war machine.