Russian Foreign Intelligence Service’s (SVR) statement original

Spies and sabotage

I have updated this as it is now available in a formal publication at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The original that came from Tass is below:

Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation: (http://svr.gov.ru/smi/2025/08/britanskie-spetssluzhby-gotovyat-ekologicheskuyu-katastrofu-v-mezhdunarodnykh-vodakh.htm)

Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service has been receiving reports indicating that the UK intelligence agencies are planning to involve NATO allies to launch a massive raid on the so-called shadow fleet.

London intends to use a resonating incident with one or several tankers for launching this campaign.

👉 This plan provides for a major act of sabotage so that the resulting damage can be used as the pretext for Russia’s oil shipments to be dubbed a threat to international maritime navigation. This would, in turn, give the West a free hand in taking countermeasures. They can go as far as detaining any vessels deemed suspicious in international waters and escorting them to ports in NATO countries.

The Britons are considering the two options as possible casus belli.

• First — staging an accident with an undesirable tanker in a narrow spot along maritime navigation routes, such as in a strait. London believes that an oil spill or the fact that the accident results in blocking the waterway would give NATO countries ‘sufficient grounds’ for creating a precedent to carry out special and extraordinary inspections of vessels in a pretended move to check them for compliance with navigation safety rules and environmental standards.

• Second — setting a tanker on fire while it unloads its cargo at a port of a country friendly to Russia. In this case, the fire is expected to cause serious damage to port infrastructure and to spread to other ships, which would require an international investigation.

❗️London intends to task Ukrainian security services with carrying out these terrorist attacks.

In fact, the UK expects the perpetrators to do the dirty work and to fail at covering up their tracks, which would serve as a safety guarantee for the British. The international investigation would hold Russia responsible for the disaster, while in the worst-case scenario Ukraine will bear the blame, as it happened with the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines.

The UK plans to choose the right moment for the attack so that it creates a ripple effect in the media for pressuring Donald Trump administration to compromise its national interests and forcing Washington to go all out in imposing harsh secondary sanctions on the buyers of Russian energy resources by casting them as having indirectly contributed to this tragedy.

The UK’s intelligence community has totally lost the remnants of any good sense because of the reminiscence for the time when Britain ruled the seas, with the British crown approving pirate lawlessness at sea.

It is high time that our UK colleagues understood that their increasingly brazen attempts not only to ‘spite’ their rivals, but to undermine global energy security and environment can make even their closest allies run out of patience.

ORIGINAL from TASS

▪️The UK’s intelligence services are planning to enlist NATO allies in a large-scale operation targeting the “shadow fleet,” which could lead to an environmental disaster in international waters

▪️According to the plan, a “resonant incident involving one or more tankers” would provide the impetus for such a campaign

▪️The plan involves organizing a major act of sabotage to allow the transportation of Russian oil to be declared a threat to all international shipping, which would give Western countries more freedom in choosing methods of counteraction

▪️The British secret services are working on “two potential casus belli”: one involves staging an “unwanted” tanker accident, such as an oil spill or blocking the fairway, and the second involves setting fire to a tanker while loading in a port of a Russia-friendly state

▪️The UK intends to time the attack so that the resulting media coverage will put pressure on the administration of US President Donald Trump

▪️The goal is to force Washington to impose the most severe secondary sanctions against buyers of Russian energy resources, portraying them as “indirect culprits of the tragedy”