“According to international maritime law, merchant ships cannot be armed, but the Russian naval fleet can take measures to protect merchant ships, and the president made comprehensive statements on this matter yesterday,” Peskov said at a press conference.

On Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a meeting with the Navy command in St. Petersburg, urged firm action against acts of piracy at sea, after warships from France, a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), detained an oil tanker in the Mediterranean see. The tanker had departed from a Russian port in the Gulf of Finland.

Warships from France, the United Kingdom, Finland, Sweden, and other NATO countries have recently been hunting civilian vessels under the pretext of their alleged ties to Russia.

The Russian Foreign Ministry warned that the country will use all available means to guarantee freedom of navigation in the face of what it described as acts of piracy in international waters.

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