When a state calls the seizure of a ship piracy and then immediately promises to do the same thing, the vocabulary stops mattering. All that remains is who has more ships at sea.

Vladimir Putin threatened that Russia would seize European ships, in response to EU plans to sell the cargo from detained tankers of Russia's so-called shadow fleet. He issued the threat during naval exercises in Russia's Far East - geographically the furthest possible point from the Baltic and the Mediterranean, where the dispute actually plays out.

At the core of the dispute are measures the Union adopted last month, allowing member states to sell oil and other cargo seized from tankers breaching sanctions. Moscow called that piracy and robbery. Putin was blunt: we will be forced to respond in kind - and that anywhere we consider it necessary and appropriate, anywhere at all.

„Anywhere” is bigger than the Baltic

That last formulation is the part worth reading twice. No sea is named, no region is named. Anywhere includes the Mediterranean - the waters through which the trade this whole part of Europe depends on passes.

That this is not a rhetorical exercise is shown by one concrete move: according to court documents, Sweden will hand Kyiv a seized Russian ship suspected of carrying grain from occupied Ukrainian territories. Every such case creates a precedent, and every precedent demands an answer - that is the mechanism being set in motion here.

Who feels the difference

A war between ships is not declared by press release. It starts with one seized tanker, then another as retaliation, and the insurance houses do the rest - raising premiums for an entire area, not just for those involved.

The Balkans knows this scene from the other side: the rules are written where there is a fleet and explained where there is none. The question is not whether the region will be asked - that was answered long ago. The question is whether anyone here is even reading these measures while they are being adopted.

For now both sides are talking about law and about rules. Neither mentions that rules at sea hold only as far as there is someone to enforce them.