Talks about this are being held in secret, according to the news site's anonymous sources, identified as two EU diplomats and two government officials. And alongside the talks, work is being done on new legislation to make it possible to make more interventions.
One proposal is said to be that countries will jointly start referring to environmental legislation to seize the often worn-out and oil-filled vessels, or to accuse them of pirate activities. An alternative being discussed is for each individual country to introduce laws that give powers to intervene further out at sea, according to Politico's sources.
However, there are many obstacles in the form of international maritime law.
We cannot block off the entire sea, but we can control a larger part. There are many possibilities, says Estonia's Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna to the site, and emphasizes that several countries need to coordinate in this.
The EU, USA, and several Western countries have introduced increasingly heavy sanctions against Russia due to the Russian invasion war in Ukraine. Russia has then launched a fleet with at least a thousand vessels to circumvent the sanctions. The vessels are typically outdated and circumvent the rules, among other things, by having complex ownership structures and sailing under so-called flags of convenience.
In this way, Russia is estimated to continue to receive large revenues from oil for the war economy that has been introduced. Around half of Russia's oil exports sail through the Finnish Bay.
