The warning comes as Italy moves directly into the fray with an operation in the Mediterranean. Putin chose the deck of the Varyag guided-missile cruiser as his stage, speaking during Russian military exercises in the Pacific. “We will respond in kind and in any sea,” he said, calling the seizures “acts of piracy, outright robbery.” The setting matters. The threat was delivered not in Moscow but aboard a warship in the Pacific — as European security interests increasingly extend into the Indo-Pacific.