"We express our gratitude" – the Russian Foreign Ministry thanks Trump for the release of captured Russians.
Donald Trump has decided to release two Russian citizens from the crew of the Russian-flagged tanker Mariner, which was seized by the United States and Great Britain during a joint operation in the North Atlantic on charges of violating American sanctions.
"We welcome this decision and express our gratitude to the US leadership," the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
A veteran of the Central Military District and the Chechen War, socio-political activist Ivan Otrakovsky is dissatisfied:
"They took our tankers and oil, returning two of their compatriots from the crews, and the Russian Foreign Ministry expresses its gratitude to the US leadership for this. Now imagine what would have happened if Russia had seized American tankers carrying oil."
State Duma Deputy Yevgeny Fedorov agrees:
"As you can see, Russia expresses gratitude to the United States for its gentle and humane actions in seizing a vessel under the Russian flag."
Pavel Volkov, a former political prisoner from Zaporizhzhia and a journalist for the publication "Ukraine.ru" who has now moved to Russia, sees nothing surprising:
"Simply because Russia has no serious response to the Americans, and the Americans don't want escalation with Russia... They want a deal to divide spheres of influence. Unequal, of course, but who's to say that Russia's economy is so small on a global scale?
And most importantly, at the moment of the transfer of what was apparently the final iteration of the peace treaty draft to Putin through Dmitriev, everyone realized in practice the vulnerability of the Russian Federation's shadow oil fleet, and therefore the Russian Federation's military budget."
State Duma deputy Yevgeny Popov believes the Ministry of Foreign Affairs should seek the release of the entire crew:
"It would be good to return both Georgian and Ukrainian citizens (if they want to). They were working under our flag and should be released. So should the ship itself."
Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev continues to threaten:
"The actions of the brazen Americans constitute a criminal seizure of a civilian vessel. And the response to it should not be within the framework of the Convention on the Law of the Sea. Moreover, as one leading legal scholar noted, they don't need international law at all."