Yves here. John Helmer describes how the US and NATO are continuing to escalate against Russia, here by increasingly targeting ship. Helmer focuses on a tanker attack in the Mediterranean, depicted as a Ukraine drone strike…when the evidence strongly suggests otherwise and Russia isn’t buying it.
By John Helmer, the longest continuously serving foreign correspondent in Russia, and the only western journalist to direct his own bureau independent of single national or commercial ties. Helmer has also been a professor of political science, and an advisor to government heads in Greece, the United States, and Asia. He is the first and only member of a US presidential administration (Jimmy Carter) to establish himself in Russia. Originally published at Dances with Bears
In the International System of Units, hertz is a unit of frequency for measuring the number of times a repeating event occurs per second, like waves, cycles or vibrations of pitch, sound, or electrical current. The common multiples are kilohertz, megahertz, and gigahertz.
Merz is the unit measuring the number of times German politicians and soldiers repeat the mistake of thinking themselves so superior to the Slavs or Russian race, they will be able to defeat them in war. The name in German for the gigamerz multiple is Friedrich (lead image).
In the new podcast with Nima Alkhorshid, we go over the evidence that the drone attack on the Qendil oil tanker off the south coast of Crete was a US-NATO operation disguised to look like a Ukrainian one. Then we discuss the implications for the European states and the UK in the escalation of the war against Russia on the Ukrainian battlefield to the high seas – from the Meditearranean to the Baltic, Atlantic, and the Caribbean.
Click to view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPEk86o9–I
The NATO-aligned website Itamilradar is reporting this map of the drone strike against the Qendil around midnight between December 18 and 19:
The strike has been presented in the maritime industry and mainstream media as Ukrainian. Reuters reported that “Ukraine has struck a Russian ‘shadow fleet’ oil tanker in the Mediterranean Sea with aerial drones for the first time, an official said on Friday, reflecting the growing intensity of Kyiv’s attacks on Russian oil shipping. The vessel – the Qendil – was empty when it was struck by drones in neutral waters more than 2,000 km (1,250 miles) from Ukraine, sustaining critical damage, the official at the SBU security service said in a written statement.”
The BBC claims to have verified the video footage of a small explosion on the deck of the vessel. “Footage given to the BBC in Kyiv by a source in the Ukrainian security service (SBU) appears to show the tanker – said to be the Oman-flagged Qendil – sailing in the open sea. A series of explosions can be seen in the footage in different areas of the tanker. The SBU told the BBC this was its first such attack in neutral waters. BBC Verify has confirmed the shape of the ship in the video is consistent with available pictures of the Qendil. We also put frames from the video through a reverse-image search on Google to check it is new. Location data transmitted by the Qendil put it 96 nautical miles [178 kms] south-west of the Greek island of Crete a few hours ago. Ship-tracking tool MarineTraffic shows the tanker entered the Mediterranean from the Suez Canal on 16 December.”
Lloyds List, a US-owned maritime publication based in London, reported the Ukrainian claim, noting “Qendil was empty at the time of the attack, sailing from Indian port of Jamnagar after unloading [oil it had loaded at Novorossiysk]. Sources from Ukraine’s security service told media that Ukraine would hit Russia’s shadow fleet tankers ‘anywhere in the world’. This was the first attack claimed by Ukraine on a tanker carrying Russian oil in the Mediterranean, marking a significant escalation.”
However, the report also noted “a security source told Lloyd’s List that a type of hexacopter drone was launched from a short distance, either from another vessel or from a neighbouring country…A security source told Lloyd’s List that the drone strike far from the traditional Black Sea theatre should be a serious wake-up call for the maritime industry. ‘If confirmed, the use of a short-range, vessel-launched or coastal drone platform would mark a significant escalation, not just in capability but in geography, signalling that commercial shipping linked to strategic energy flows may now face risk well beyond declared conflict zones,’ the source said.”
Source: https://www.lloydslist.com/LL1155927/Ukraine-targets-shadow-fleet-tanker-in-Mediterranean
In addition to western maritime experts, Russian sources believe the Qendil was not attacked from the Ukraine, but instead from a launch site on Crete, or on the Libyan coast to the south, or from a US or NATO naval vessel in the eastern Mediterranean. NATO maritime surveillance of the area of the attack, and of Russian naval operations there, is intense, based in Sicily and Cyprus, especially in the preparations the Trump Administration had ordered for drone and missile attacks on ISIS positions in Syria which occurred on December 19-20.
At the time of the attack on the Qendil, the Russian submarine Krasnodar and its tender the Altai were in port at Algiers 1,000 kms to the west.
Greek sources suspect that the likely launch site for the attack drone and also the surveillance drones used to prepare and then film the operation was Tympaki, a Greek Coast Guard base on the south coast of Crete. This base, the Greek sources add, is known to be equipped with Israeli drones for maritime surveillance; its location is less than 100 kms from the tanker location when it was attacked.
In the Greek parliament, Nikos Papanastasis, a deputy of the Greek Communist Party (KKE), challenged the veracity of the media reports and asked whether the government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis is now at war with Russia. “Nikos Papanastasis…raised reasonable questions about the strike of a Ukrainian drone on a Russian tanker, south of Crete, speaking to the Parliamentary Committee on the government bill ‘Charter for the Transition of the Armed Forces to the New Era’. He wondered if the air defence systems of the Greek Air Force saw the drone? Is this the first time that a Ukrainian drone has flown over Greek airspace? Did it return to Ukraine or did it land at a Greek airport? He noted that the government’s policy has put the country in the eye of the storm and it is not the first time. ‘We started by strengthening Ukraine with war materiel, with funding, with support of all kinds. And today we have reached the point where the war is being waged in our country,’ underlined N. Papanastasis and spoke of these very dangerous developments. ‘If Putin’s statements that the case will be investigated and whoever is responsible and has put his hand in it will pay is true, we understand where the government, the people and the country are involved,’ he added. Papanastasis stressed that the KKE has repeatedly stressed the dangers for the people from the government’s policy and the country’s attachment to the wolf alliances of NATO and the EU and added that the government’s policy has put the country in the eye of the storm.”
For evidence and follow-up to add to the discussion:
Secretary of State Rubio taunts Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov on tanker war in Caribbean
“QUESTION: Secretary – yeah. (Laughter.) All right. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. So the United States on one hand are mediating with Russia to end the war in Ukraine, but on the other hand, the Russian foreign minister yesterday or the day before said it would be a fatal mistake from the U.S. to block the oil tankers from Venezuela and trying to overthrow the Maduro regime. So what kind of a – what’s this – what’s the assess you’re doing, and are there any safeguard in place to avoid escalation with Russia? …
SECRETARY RUBIO: Yeah, we’re not concerned about an escalation with Russia with regards to Venezuela. I mean, I – we’ve always expected them to provide rhetorical support for the Maduro regime. I think they have their hands full in Ukraine. And if he’s watching, Sergey, merry Christmas. And – but at the end of the day, I expected them to say what they were going to say. The rhetorical support – we understand what that – it’s not a factor in how we consider this whole thing.”
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=en3jBpH9olQ Opening the press conference, Rubio showed off that he is multilingual: “I can do English. I’ll answer Spanish if you ask Spanish, and then I’ll answer it in – I’ll answer it in English after I answer it in Spanish. So any other languages I won’t be able to do it, but those two.”
For a version of Rubio’s thinking on Russian vulnerabilities, leaked by Rubio’s staff to Seymour Hersh, read this.
French President Macron breaks with Chancellor Merz, proposes new direct talks with Putin
Click to read this and the French response to the Kremlin.
Speaking in Cairo, Lavrov commented on the new French initiative.
“Question: You have just spoken with your Egyptian counterpart about the Ukrainian settlement. What do you think, when may the next round of negotiations with the Americans take place? Given yesterday and today’s statements by the EU summit, including French President E. Macron, who said that it would be useful for Europe to resume negotiations with Russia in the coming weeks, do you think the third participant is needed by the Russian-American negotiations? I mean the Europeans.
Sergei Lavrov: First of all, I want to emphasize once again that our position is very clear. It is not subject to any opportunistic considerations and fluctuations. Russian President Vladimir Putin regularly, including literally today, once again stated this position. It can’t cause any doubt. We are committed to a political settlement. So far, we see that only the United States is ready for this from those who are directly involved in the negotiations. It is important for us that the understandings reached in Alaska in August of this year and confirmed during the visit of the special envoy of US President S. Witkoff and political adviser to the Russian Federation on December 2 of this year remain in force.
We appreciate that our partners in the countries of the Global South, including the Arab Republic of Egypt, as well as China, India, Brazil, the Gulf states and many other representatives of the World Majority, welcome and express the hope that the Russian-American efforts will bring a result to reliably resolve the current situation that Westerners have been preparing for many years after the coup in Kiev in 2014. At the same time, to make in such a way as to fully reflect the understandings that we have had in recent years, not to mention the implementation of the UN Charter, which requires respect for the rights of national minorities, human rights, including linguistic and religious. What the Nazi regime does in Kiev is a direct violation of the UN Charter, including when the Russian language and the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church are banned. So I think that in this work with the Americans we feel the support of the World Majority. I want to emphasize this. Mr. Minister B. Abdelati reaffirmed Egypt’s position.
As for the consultations that the EU has been holding with V.A. Zelensky and S. Witkoff, we do not yet have information about what really happened there. But European leaders have already made many statements by advertising ‘achievements’ as they characterize them, following the results of these consultations. We can’t help but have any questions. For example, one of the central themes is called security guarantees to Kiev. We recall that we advocate collective security guarantees that would be based on the principles adopted repeatedly at the OSCE-level, and which require the indivisibility of security, equal, require each state not to strengthen its security by impairing the security of others. That is, they demand not to do exactly what the Kiev regime is doing now with the support of its European ‘benefactors’.
At the same time, they discuss security guarantees, if you follow the media reports and public statements of the German Chancellor F. Merz, the head of the European Commission, U. von der Leyen, Prime Minister of Britain K. Starmer and other participants in this process, which involve the creation of a multinational force for Ukraine led by Europe. These forces will help in the restoration of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, in ensuring control over the airspace of this country, maritime security, as well as through operations inside Ukraine on the ground. That is, it is not so much about security guarantees, but about another deception, an attempt to carry out the military development of Ukrainian territory as a springboard for creating threats to the Russian Federation.
And not just for threat. German Chancellor F. Merz has already openly stated that Germany should prepare for war with the Russian Federation. The same statements are made by British Prime Minister K. Starmer, and a number of other ‘hawks’, as they are called, in the leadership of the European Union and the North Atlantic Alliance, including the President of the European Commission, U von der Leyen and NATO Secretary General M. Rutte. All of them significantly exceed their powers when they declare such an aggressive line that does not reflect the unanimous opinion of the EU member states and the North Atlantic Alliance…
If we talk about the Europeans as a potential third participant, then we do not need to help with such positions. The Russian-American dialogue draws on a strong understanding of Alaska. We see no reason why the U.S. administration would move away from this agreed position. Moreover, these understandings are directly based on the proposals of US President Donald Trump and his negotiating team. Therefore, we do not need to help Europe, it is better not to interfere. And then, I think we’ll be fine.
The statement of the President of France E. Macron that it is still necessary to talk with Russia, I am not even going to comment on. You will read what he has said in the past few months since ‘the only villain in this whole story is Russia and personally President Vladimir Putin.’ If he is ready to talk, our President has repeatedly stressed that he is always open to contacts. With the understanding that these will be polite people with some elementary skills of decency.”
Note that the tanker incident occurred late on 18th December more or less when the EU Council had already decided about further financial help to Ukraine with the new joint 90.000 debt package.
This decision at the last minute avoided full Ukrainian crisis but it had an excess of symbolism which IMO will strike back to Merz and the accompanying “leaders”. This is the first time the EU will issue joint debt to finance a war waged by a third country. I will call these, when they become finally issued, the Eurobonds of Russophobia. Only to increase the symbolism, you know. But now see that the liberal Professional Managerial Castes of Europe are noting that with this decision they (we?) now own Ukraine. It is not me saying it, a have taken the idea from an Editorial run at El Pais (typical PMC-MSM): Europe Pays the First Installment to Secure Ukraine / Europa abona el primer plazo para hacerse con Ucrania. Such payment comes with rights over Ukraine and now the chorus asking for Ukraine to retain their younger adults in Ukraine and not let them flee is growing louder and louder. This is IMO a new low for El País to join this chorus because (link in Spanish) the younger will be needed for “defence and reconstruction”.
I would like to point to a few factors in this interesting essay by Helmer. The first is that, after yesterday’s post about letters of marque, we are seeing one more incident of piracy and criminal destruction of property (think: Nordstream). Further, how does it benefit Greece, a country with many fortunes built on shipping, to destroy the rules of the high seas?
Second, it is important to note Lavrov’s comment about OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe). Has anyone in the US of A mentioned the OSCE lately? Blinken, Rubio? Lavrov: “We recall that we advocate collective security guarantees that would be based on the principles adopted repeatedly at the OSCE-level, and which require the indivisibility of security, equal, require each state not to strengthen its security by impairing the security of others.”
The Russians want to revive the OCSE, which means rounds of negotiations leading to a revived Helsinki Accord. Is this truly so unreasonable? The reactions of Merz and von der Leyen (as well as Kallas and the ever blustery Polish elites) truly do resemble what Helmer describes up top: They think that they can militarily defeat the Russians, who are, well, as they say in Ukraine, orcs.
PS: What passes for sophistication and refinement in the U S of A: “Rubio showed off that he is multilingual: “I can do English. I’ll answer Spanish if you ask Spanish, and then I’ll answer it in – I’ll answer it in English after I answer it in Spanish. So any other languages I won’t be able to do it, but those two.” In the US of A, “bilingual” means U.S. English and New-World Spanish. Doesn’t that apply to everyone?, well, even though the Brasileiros live in MonroeDoctrineLandia and sure do falar an odd kind of espanhol…
It’s funny how they all think that they can defeat Russia, but none of them envisin themselves anywhere near actual combat. That’s what the European peasants are for, let them go die instead of demanding things like social safety nets and being a nuisance in general.
I was initially going to say that surely Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis would not be so stupid as to drag Greece into this quagmire but a moment’s reflection reminded me that he has done similar. Under Washington’s orders in 2022, Greece seized an Iranian-flagged oil tanker with 19 Russian crew members on board. They then started to transfer that oil to another tanker as they said that they were giving that oil to the US for free. Iran then seized two Greek oil tankers and the jig was up. Conveniently a Greek court told the government to free that ship. The tanker reloaded the stolen oil and then went on its way. Iran later released those two Greek tankers after Greece gave an apology, paid compensation and pledged never to do it again-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Iran%E2%80%93Greece_naval_incident
Point is that 2022 incident was unnecessary and prone to blowback but Mitsotakis did it anyway. having learned nothing from that episode, he is now dragging Greece into a fight with Russia when the Greeks as a whole are well disposed to Russians.
Greece has a sub-human political class, a parasitic comprador “elite” that thrives on a dysfunction it will never fix. They’re in a symbiotic relationship with local oligarchs, which they shake down in exchange for allowing cartels, anticompetitive practices and enabling wage suppression for middle.class and slave wages for workers through open migration. To navigate this morass they operate clientalist networks at the social level and encourage corruption in place of genuine development, which would render them redundant.They are also supported by “foreign partners”, as long as they toe the line with NATO politics and other unwanted policies, like migration, gay marriage, LGBTQ++ fads, Banderites, etc. This political class is too fragile to risk losing a confrontation, i.e. genuine corruption investigations or to stand up to bullying by Turkey over airspace and maritime incursions, so they bend the nation over to receive US & Israeli “support”. Meanwhile Turkey is buying influence through “make money, not war” policies that targets the politicians, oligarchs, think tanks, academics and mainstream media presstitutes- at the expense of Greece’s national interests but to the financial benefit of the oligarchs and corrupt elite. They have also captured the media to “disappear” provocative content, and go after independent journalists in harassment campaigns and even assassination. They are deadly, laser-focused and hyper compétant on controlling the narrative, information flows, and monetizing power. As administrators and guardians of the national interest they are useless traitors, and live in fear of a public they hate and which hates them. They shocking thing is that this is getting worse, almost like an orgy of looting to get as much as they can before some deadline, some “turning/crash” which they may see clearly and the rest of us clearly suspect.
The ‘Turning /Crash’ may well be the collapse of the American system.
The (non)reaction in Germany to the case of Jacques Baud is a pretty good indicator of how low ethical standards and true standing by principles really has dropped. In other words: if you look at Baud´s treatment alone you know where the voyage is headed.
Excerpt from Florian Warweg asking about Baud in the German press conference including a by now infamous quote which already has made its rounds in altern. media:
“(…)
Excerpt from the verbatim transcript of the government press conference of December 17, 2025
Question from Warweg:
Mr. Giese, on December 15, Germany voted in the Council of the European Union to add the Swiss military analyst and multiple bestselling non-fiction author Jacques Baud to the EU sanctions list. The sole justification given, without further evidence, is that he is a regular guest on pro-Russian television and radio programs and disseminates theories about the origins of the war in Ukraine that the EU does not share. I would like to know: Is it really the current position of the German government to impose comprehensive sanctions on renowned military analysts like Baud and massively infringe upon their fundamental rights simply because one does not agree with the content of his analyses of the war in Ukraine?
Giese (AA):
Unfortunately, you were not present last Friday, when we discussed in considerable detail the consequences of spreading disinformation. It concerned a case of attribution. I don’t want to reopen this discussion, but it has also become clear that people who do such things can be sanctioned if the legal grounds exist and there is a corresponding decision by the Council of the European Union. This happened this Monday, it will continue to happen, it has happened in the past, and everyone working in this field must expect that it could happen to them as well.
Additional question from Warweg:
Yes, the only specific accusation in the sanctions order is that Jacques Baud is spreading the conspiracy theory that Ukraine provoked its own invasion in order to join NATO. However, this is not an original statement by Baud; rather, he is referring to a statement by Zelenskyy’s former chief advisor for strategic communications in the area of national security, Oleksiy Arestovych, who in 2009 [slip of the tongue, it should be 2019] [The editor] stated in an interview that there is a 99.9 percent probability that the price of Ukraine joining NATO would be a major war with Russia. Against this backdrop, I would be interested to know whether the German representative in the Council of the European Union actually checked the presented justifications for the sanctions for their veracity beforehand, or whether he simply rubber-stamped them without any fact-checking or source verification. Because the central accusation is simply not true.
Giese (AA)
I could take the easy way out and say: This is a decision that was made in Brussels. But I could go a step further and say: Yes, we are also convinced of it. That’s why it was a unanimous decision.
All those who disagree with their sanctions have every possible legal means to challenge them. They can appeal to the Council, and they can also appeal to the European Court of Justice.
Addendum Warweg
With frozen accounts, great.
(…)”
BSW-member Andrej Hunko put this quote into a recent tweet on Baud which made it known.
And this just goes by UNCOMMENTED by 90% of German legacy media and public broadcasters.
This is fucking insane.
And trust me if I say that countless educated Germans – with leftist views – do not see the issue here.
Another piece here:
Daniel Davis with Jacques Baud on his sanctions and how they work
25 min.
https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2025/12/we-are-all-colonel-jacques-baud.html
Although Martyanov´s insults (in comments more than in videos) are sometimes tiring I end up agreeing. Looking at these things from RU perspective his sentinemt and spewing is perfectly understandable. Additionally with all the info that is circulating in Russia which you would never read or hear in Germany.
A modern Inquisition. Slow destruction by sanctions instead of burning at the stake.
Tangential. Today Helmer published an even more interesting piece – apparently, someone finally managed to declassify and release the transcripts of three conversations between Putin and George W. Bush, in 2001, 2005 and 2008. Lots of meat to sink one’s teeth into there. I would even suggest clicking through to the original source and reading the documents themselves instead of or before Helmer’s summation.
Wonder if the Russian media notices or reacts in any way, shape or form. I wouldn’t expect the Americans so to do.
John Helmer’s piece – https://johnhelmer.net/the-putin-bush-conversations-what-was-left-unsaid/
Original documents (scroll down a bit) – https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/foia-russia-programs/2025-12-23/archive-lawsuit-opens-vladimir-putin-memconstelcons?
Thanks!!!!
Oooooh … thanks for this!
Compliments of The Season!
I’ve suspected the parts about Iran. It’s still revealing to see the way it was discussed.
First, western supplied weapons/sat/personnel/intelligence were provided to Ukraine to fight Russia in Ukraine.
Then the west allowed all that to be used to attack Russia from Ukraine.
Now we might be seeing Ukraine assets (drones) to be used for direct attacks on Russian assets from western lands or ships worldwide, imo a continuation of the western attack on the gas pipeline to Germany.
Russia has so far restrained itself from directly responding by attacking western assets, or involving itself in the existing ME war or the new Venezuela one. Seems pretty dangerous to me.
Russia did attack Turkish ships heading into Odessa’s port. That did not trigger Article 5, so what is good for the goose is becoming good for the gander.
We are to take your retort seriously? Russia’s action in Odessa is a pinprick compared to what the West has been doing.
And you are also sloppy to the point of being misleading. And FFS, attacking three privately owned ships (not vessels of the Turkish navy) and merely damaging them is not even remotely an Article 5 event.
Yves, I want to thank you for linking to John Helmer. I have grown ever more impressed with his analysis over time. Whenever he writes, he supports it with documentation. Ditto when being interviewed on Nima Alkhorshid’s Dialogue Works. During these interviews, he refers to hard copy papers that he has gathered around him to quote directly as documentation. Further, he is also very careful to state when he is not an expert in a particular topic area. I find his precision unusually good compared to others featured on such shows as Dialogue Works who often as not speak outside their area of expertise and begin to spout no more than opinion. Please share my comment with John Helmer as you wish. I say kudos to him