A drone has reportedly targeted the vessel en route to the port of Novorossiysk | An oil tanker en route to the Russian port of Novorossiysk has been attacked in the Black Sea, according to maritime news website Lloyd’s List. ● The Palau-flagged ‘Elbus’ was sailing east about 30 nautical miles (55.5km) off the Turkish coastline on Wednesday when it “experienced an unmanned marine-vehicle and drone attack,” the outlet wrote on Thursday, citing its own intelligence data. The tanker diverted from its course and made a sharp turn towards the coast around the time of the attack. ● According to Turkish media, the Coast Guard received a distress call from the ship and dispatched teams to the area, which escorted the vessel to the shore. The tanker is said to have been hit in its upper sections. No injuries or pollution have been reported. At the time of publication, no statement had been issued by Turkish or Russian authorities. ● At least five commercial Russia-trading tankers have reportedly been attacked by suspected Ukrainian drones in the Black Sea since November. Two of them, both Gambian-flagged vessels, were struck off Türkiye’s coast while en route to Novorossiysk. The tankers had been previously sanctioned by Western states for transporting oil in violation of restrictions imposed on Russia since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022.

■ US military breached UN maritime convention – Russia (RT)
■ US’s Seizure of Other Countries' Vessels Seriously Violates International Law – China (Sputnik)
■ UK says it provided ‘support’ to US seizure of Russian tanker (RT)
■ Gerald Celente: WWIII has begun and there will be a false flag attack that makes it official (VIDEO)
🚩 Three Takeaways From The US’ Seizure Of A Russian-Flagged Tanker In The Atlantic (Andrew Korybko)

1/ UK assisted US, earlier Russia's Envoy to the UN said that Russia 'condemns the seizure by US troops of petroleum tankers and the effective imposition of a blockade on Venezuela'

2/ Detained commercial vessel was chartered by a private trader under the flag of Guyana, with a crew of 28 people: 20 Ukrainians, 6 Georgians (including the Captain) & 2 Russian citizens — RT source

3/ On December 24, 2025, the ship ‘Marinera’ received a temporary permit to sail under the state flag of the Russian Federation — RT source

4/ US Coast Guard demanded the ship move to a US port, as US side did not receive confirmation from Guyana that it granted the ship its flag (while it was located near Venezuela) — RT source

5/ The vessel changed course & headed into the Atlantic Ocean. En route, the Captain, accompanied by the US Coast Guard ship, changed the ship's name to Marinera & received temporary registration under the Russian flag from the Captain of the Sochi port — RT source

6/ Though the flight had a purely commercial nature, Russia will handle all matters related to the protection of Russian citizens on board the ship — RT source

Postil Editorial | The Crime of Independent Thought: From Analyst to Heretic | In the shadowed theatre of contemporary European politics, where spectacle often substitutes for substance and moral posturing masks a vacuum of principle, the figure of Colonel Jacques Baud emerges not as a rabble-rouser, but as a profound and unsettling reflection. A former Swiss strategic intelligence officer, NATO planner, and United Nations peacekeeping expert, Baud is the antithesis of the caricatured dissident. His method is not the megaphone but the microscope; his weapon, not rhetoric, but evidence; his arena, not the public square, but the dispassionate realm of analysis. Yet, for committing the most subversive act possible in our era—the insistence on thinking clearly and speaking truthfully about war, power, and the West’s complicities—he has been systematically hounded, professionally ostracized, and publicly vilified. The persecution of Jacques Baud is not an anomaly; it is the diagnostic symptom of a Europe that has tragically confused democracy with docility, freedom with fealty to consensus, and its own enlightened values with a rigid, pusillanimous conformity. In an age that demands heroes of conviction over heroes of conquest, Baud stands as a necessary one, a man persecuted precisely for embodying the intellectual rigour Europe claims to revere.