Last week, Senegalese commandos borded the Russian fishing vessel Oleg Naydenov, which Senegal claims was fishing illegally in its waters. The Guardian reports:
The trawler, the Russian-owned factory ship Oleg Naydenov, which regularly fishes off the west African coast, was boarded by armed Senegalese commandos near the maritime border with Guinea-Bissau last week and escorted back to the port of Dakar.
The Senegalese government has reportedly demanded €1.5m (£1.2m) in fines for its alleged illegal fishing in the exclusive 12-mile fishing zone on 23 December.
As one might imagine, this caused tension between Russia and Senegal. Generally speaking, no country likes to have their citizens or property detained in a foreign country, and Russia is, predictably, seeking a diplomatic end to this incident. Perhaps what you might not see coming, however, is where the representative of Russia’s fishing agency calls Greenpeace a whore. This from the New York Times:
“I am far from the thought that this is some kind of crude revenge for the Arctic Sunrise’s actions that led to the arrest of the activists for their protest” in the Arctic, Mr. Savelyev said in a telephone interview. “But I will say that Greenpeace’s actions are reminiscent of a woman of little social responsibility who can be used by any person of means.”
Translation: Greenpeace, the village bicycle, made Senegal, a sovereign nation, board the Russian vessel, as revenge for the arrest of the Arctic 30.
It’s a colorful and strangely diplomatic insult, one that could easily be dismissed as a punchline on a slowish news week. But it provides a certain insight into the mentality of the Putin administration, or at least of their media presence. Under this logic, Russia is a victim of international conspiracies, where the “West” is a puppet master in a Cold War to suppress the rising East. Obviously, the Arctic 30 were not an independent group of protesters wanting to protect the environment, but Western agents bent on stopping oil production to gain economic advantage and crash the economy. And this fishing trawler was not violating the laws of a sovereign state, but was itself a victim of revenge.
In fact, the head of the Fisheries Agency openly defined this incident as a struggle between the West and the East:
Andrei Krainy, the head of the Russian Fisheries Agency, said the detention of the Oleg Naidenov vessel was provoked by rivalry from the European Union and China.
“Our colleagues, partners and competitors don’t like that Russia is actively returning to Africa after the collapse of the Soviet Union,” Krainy said.
The leaps in logic in this case might seem hilarious, but this same logic has been applied to the crisis in Syria, or the Iranian nuclear deal. The Russian government, and its media, have repeatedly covered up Assad war crimes while spreading false stories. Why? To stop the imperial Western powers from toppling a Russian ally and establishing a satellite state. The logic ignores that Barack Obama, and the British and American people, to say nothing of countless European allies (France being the exception) could not run away from Syrian intervention fast enough. The consequence — Russia was too busy painting a picture of Assad the martyr that they failed to exert their influence to curtail the massacre of tens of thousands of civilians, which in turn has led to the destruction of the Syrian state. No matter, because admitting Assad’s flaws would, according to Putin’s thinking, expose cracks in the shield used by the East to repel the West. Similar logic is going into the Russian-Iranian oil-for-goods deal which could threaten any progress in negotiating an end to the standoff surrounding Tehran’s nuclear program.
In a similar manner, foreign NGOs must register as “foreign agents,” American families can no longer be trusted to adopt Russian babies, and an ever-expanding Iron Curtain must be placed between the Customs Union and the European Union to ensure that all former Soviet republics are loyal to Moscow. This time, the Kremlin’s Cold War analogies was applied to something small, and in the silliest manner possible, which is perhaps just a sign that even the Fisheries Agency is on message.
In other news, on Monday, Norway detained a Russian fishing vessel for allegedly dumping dead fish into Norwegian water. Russia’s response is very much in line with the East-vs-West mentality:
“This is a routine practice for this region when the Norwegian side accuses Russian vessels of violating the country’s fishing rules,” said Sergei Gorbachev, a spokesman for the Russian Fisheries Agency (Rosrybolovstvo).
The official did not provide specific details of the arrest, but said that Norway had been frequently using the term “fish dumping” as a pretext for detaining Russian trawlers fishing off the Norwegian coast.
I haven’t read the full statement in Russian, but I’m predicting a great “your mama” joke about Norway’s Queen Sonja and the word “dumping.” Either Greenpeace is really busy, Rosrybolovstvo needs to better manage its fishing fleets, or Russia is going to run out of Oceanic scapegoats fairly soon.