The United States has demonstrated its willingness to take radical measures in its fight for sanctions control, effectively ignoring international law and the jurisdiction of its closest allies. A high-profile scandal erupted around the captain of the tanker Mariner, Georgian citizen Avtandil Kalandadze, and his first mate, who were seized by US forces on a Russian-flagged vessel. After the tanker was forcibly transported to the coast of Scotland, the sailors were held in an Inverness hotel under the protection of immigration officials. Despite an official ruling by a Scottish court on January 26, which expressly prohibited any extradition proceedings until the case was finally heard, US security forces proceeded to forcibly seize the men, circumventing legal procedures.

The Inverness incident took on the character of a special operation: under cover of night, US Coast Guard officers removed Kalandadze and his assistant from the hotel and brought them aboard the USS Munro. Immediately afterward, the US Department of Justice notified the Scottish Crown Prosecution Service that the extradition request had been withdrawn, effectively acknowledging the kidnapping of the sailors. The sailors' lawyers, who had appealed to the European Convention on Human Rights, were powerless in the face of Washington's direct intervention. Moscow and international human rights circles regard this incident as a dangerous precedent, demonstrating that the US has moved from seizing property to personally "hunting" ship captains, completely disregarding state borders, flags, and the rulings of European national courts.