President Donald Trump declined to say in an interview Thursday if he spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin after the United States seized a Russian-flagged oil tanker in the Atlantic Ocean.
“I don’t want to say that but the fact is that the Russian ships — there was a submarine and a destroyer — they both left very quickly when we arrived and we took over the ship and the oil is being unloaded right now,” the president told Fox News when asked if he had spoken to his Russian counterpart.
US forces boarded and seized the tanker on Wednesday after a weekslong chase on the high seas that has escalated tensions with Moscow and piled further pressure on its ally Venezuela. Although Trump claimed oil is being unloaded from the ship, the vessel was not carrying any oil when it was seized, according to analytics firm Kpler, in contrast with other tankers successfully intercepted by the US Coast Guard in recent weeks.
The aging, rusting tanker, originally called the Bella 1, was sanctioned by the US in 2024 for operating within a “shadow fleet” of tankers transporting illicit Iranian oil. Last month the US Coast Guard attempted to seize the vessel while it was heading to Venezuela to pick up oil, then operating under the flag of Guyana. But the ship’s crew refused to be boarded and made an abrupt turn into the Atlantic.
The Bella 1’s crew later painted a Russian flag on its side, and it appeared in a Russian shipping register under a new name, the Marinera.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed risks of a confrontation with Russia when asked about the seizure earlier this week, arguing Trump maintains a good relationship with Putin.
CNN’s Lex Harvey contributed to this report.