Explaining Russia’s Restrained Response To Estonia Seizing One Of Its “Shadow Fleet” Vessels

Russia wants to avoid falling into the UK’s trap for sabotaging its rapprochement with the US by credibly threatening military force against Estonia in response to this provocation, but Putin’s patience might run out if the US is unable or unwilling to prevent its partners from staging repeat incidents.

Estonia seized one of Russia’s “shadow fleet” vessels on Friday just two days after approving a new law that allows it to use force to sink such ships if they pose a national security threat. RT chief Margarita Simonyan condemned the first as state-sponsored piracy while Putin’s senior aide Nikolai Patrushev speculated that Britain might be behind the second. Russia has yet to significantly respond to this latest provocation at the time of writing. Here are some background briefings for contextualizing everything:

* 1 October 2024: “Don’t Forget About How NATO’s Northeastern Flank Can Stir Up A Lot Of Trouble For Russia”

* 11 February 2025: “The Baltic Front”

* 14 February 2025: “Will The EU Seize Russia’s ‘Shadow Fleet’ In The Baltic?”

* 11 March 2025: “Russian Spies Warn That The UK Is Trying To Sabotage Trump’s Envisaged ‘New Détente’”

* 24 March 2025: “Putin’s Senior Aide Patrushev Shared Some Updates About The Arctic & Baltic Fronts”

This seizure coincided with Trump envoy Steve Witkoff’s third meeting with Putin, which follows Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev helping to break their impasse on Ukraine during his trip to DC the week prior. The diplomatic trajectory of the Russian-US talks on normalizing ties and ending their proxy war in Ukraine is therefore back on a positive track, which upsets European warmongers like the UK. It can thus be concluded that Patrushev is probably right since London does indeed have an interest in sabotaging this.

To that end, it makes perfect sense for the UK to embolden its Estonian partner, in whose country it has a little less than 1,000 troops, to provoke Russia into a military reaction by seizing one of its alleged “shadow fleet” vessels, mischievously timed as it was during Witkoff’s latest trip to Russia. Precisely for that reason, however, Russia’s response will likely remain militarily restrained even if it soon goes all out in politically condemning Estonia and UK. That’s because Moscow doesn’t want to fall into London’s trap.

Putin might hope that Trump could pressure the UK and Estonia into not carrying out any more such provocations, perhaps by having the US convey (whether openly or discreetly) that it wouldn’t extend Article 5 defense guarantees to them if future seizures result in armed clashes of any sort with Russia. The precedent for this proposal rests in what Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth declared in early February about how the US won’t extend these same guarantees to NATO countries’ troops in Ukraine.

Whether in parallel with the above or in place thereof, the US could also convey that it will pull its troops from Estonia if this happens again, though that could backfire by prompting the UK to transform its rotational presence there into a permanent one. The consequence would be that no return to the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act would be possible like Putin wants without London’s agreement just like that’s no longer possible without Berlin’s after Germany just opened a permanent base in Lithuania.

If France does something similar with regard to its rotational presence in Romania, then Western Europe’s three traditional Great Powers would essentially be leapfrogging eastward to collectively prevent Trump from potentially reaching a deal with Putin for restoring the NATO-Russia Founding Act. It was already assessed here that the US is unlikely to withdraw its forces from Central & Eastern Europe so such developments might be part of these countries’ competition for leadership in post-conflict Europe.

Neither Russia nor the US might be able to stop this since the first won’t risk World War III by using force in response to such low-level intra-NATO deployments no matter how threatening it regards them as being while the second has lost control over its rebellious German, British, and French allies. In any case, the relevance of this scenario to British-backed Estonia seizing one of Russia’s alleged “shadow fleet” vessels is that a strong political reaction from Moscow could be exploited to justify the UK doing this.

The decision might have already been made in order to complicate the Russian-US rapprochement and compete with its traditional Western European Great Power peers even if this latest move doesn’t sabotage the positive trajectory of the Russian-US talks. A militarily restrained response from Russia (regardless of how strong its political one is), however, could expose the UK’s possible plan of establishing a permanent military presence in Estonia as provocative by removing the main pretext.

Although the end result would be the same, namely that this might happen no matter what, Russia could at least be able to more compellingly present it as a destabilizing move before the global public. That’s better than Moscow falling for London’s trap by issuing credible military threats against Tallinn that could risk reversing the recent progress in ties with Washington and even rallying NATO against Russia. If Putin won’t risk war over this, then it’s the best course of action for now, unless there are repeat incidents.

In that event, he might eventually overcome his innate reluctance to escalate just like he did in late November when authorizing the use of his country’s hitherto top-secret medium-range hypersonic Oreshnik missiles, in which case the US’ stance towards Article 5 in this context would be paramount. Repeat incidents would only happen if the US is unable or unwilling to control British-backed Estonia. It might respectively therefore withhold such defense guarantees or explicitly reaffirm them.

Trump’s decision will ultimately come down to whether he’d by then become impatient with Putin over the latter’s unwillingness up until this point to majorly compromise on his maximum goals. He already expressed such sentiments right before Dmitriev’s latest trip and once again posted about them during Witkoff’s visit on Friday so he could possibly support future seizures as a form of pressure upon Russia. That would be an extremely dangerous way to “escalate to de-escalate” on better terms for Ukraine.

What’s described above is one of the worst-case scenarios since Putin couldn’t back down without Russia losing the sizeable budgetary revenue that it reportedly derives from its “shadow fleet’s” Baltic activities, not to mention losing face across the whole world, so he might very well escalate then. As of now, however, everything remains manageable but that could suddenly change. Russia’s restrained response to Estonia’s provocative naval seizure is pragmatic but even Putin’s patience has its limits.