The P-3 propellor plane banks sharply, silhouetted against dozens of shimmering lights in the sea against an Argentine sunset. As the camera pans across the scene, it becomes clear: the glaring lights come from dozens of fishing vessels dotting the ocean below.

The footage, shared by the Argentine military in late February, shows the overwhelming scale of a flotilla near a marine boundary which separates the country’s more restrictive exclusive economic zone from less-regulated international waters.

This area, about 200 nautical miles off the coast of southern Argentina, is notorious for illegal and unregulated fishing — often carried out by Chinese vessels, according to the Argentine Navy.

Most of these ships hunt for squid, which are abundant along the Argentine coast and a vital food source in the marine ecosystem.

The Argentine military is now ramping up efforts to combat these fishing operations in a region experts warn is on the brink of environmental collapse.

The military’s footage shows an advanced P-3C “Orion” surveillance plane — designed for anti-submarine and maritime surveillance — approaching the fishing fleet. The aircraft took part in the Argentine military operation in January alongside a smaller C-12 surveillance plane and two corvette warships, according to the Argentine navy.

This surveillance mission was conducted to address ongoing concerns that the fishing vessels may cross into the country’s more restricted EEZ, according to a spokesperson for Defense Minister Luis Petri.

The mission identified a total of 380 fishing vessels just outside Argentina’s EEZ, many of which sailed from Asia to richer waters, the military says.

Since September, the Argentine Navy has acquired multiple planes designed for maritime surveillance, which Petri said will help “control and monitor” the country’s coastline “in light of the enormous challenge we face with the possible intrusion of fishing vessels into our Exclusive Economic Zone.”

Petri described the existential threat earlier this year, arguing that “the (natural) resources of all Argentines are at stake.”

A ‘floating city’ off Argentina’s coast

The cluster of ships, stretching approximately 150 miles from north to south, raised concerns over illicit fishing. At night, many of these fishing vessels turn on bright lights to lure squid to the surface, where they are harvested using a large net. The lights are so strong that they can be seen from space.

Argentina’s Navy has noted a pattern of foreign fishing vessels turning off their tracking systems to avoid detection when illegally fishing inside the exclusive economic zone — an area where Argentina maintains sovereign rights to its natural resources, according to international law.

Historical ship tracking data corroborates the pattern and reveals these abundant waters off Argentina’s coast as a hotspot for lapsed vessel beacons.

Seven of the identified vessels — all sailing under China’s flag — were operating under US sanctions, according to a Treasury Department database.

These ships are linked to Fujian Provincial Pingtan County Ocean Fishing Group Co., Ltd., a Chinese fishing company which was sanctioned by the US in 2022 for its involvement in “serious human rights abuses” and illegal fishing, including operations in the protected waters of the Galapagos Islands and the transport of more than 6,600 shark carcasses, according to a US Treasury Department press release.

The company also received a $19 million subsidy from China’s government as an incentive to develop its deep-water fishing capabilities, according to the statement.

The US Treasury Department press release detailed reports of forced labor, physical abuse, and extreme isolation among crew members. In one case, a Pingtan crew member who tried to leave a vessel after learning of unpaid wages was allegedly denied permission and deprived of food for three days, according to the statement.

It added that China has “actively participated in the formulation of international rules related to fishery subsidies” and has made “contributions to the conservation and sustainable use of fishery resources and the maintenance of a fair and reasonable international maritime order.”

Pingtan Fishing Group stated that it “has endeavored to ensure that its fishing methods are in compliance with international standards and the laws and regulations of the operating waters” in a letter responding to the Treasury Department’s 2022 sanctions.

Satellite imagery obtained from Planet Labs and captured in the area surveilled by the Argentine military offers a glimpse into this fleet.

In one case, a former crewmember on one squid fishing vessel, Ning Tai 52, accused its parent company Zhoushan Ningtai Ocean Fisheries of employing forced labor practices, according to a 2021 Greenpeace report.

In response to the allegation in Greenpeace’s report, Zhoushan Fisheries said they were “perplexed to be receiving this kind of complaint… we assure you that no such thing as forced labor has occurred.”

Illicit fishing has plagued costal Argentina for decades, experts say, with the Argentine Navy saying that Chinese vessels are frequent violators of the exclusive economic zone.

According to the United Nations, illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing can undermine efforts “to manage fisheries sustainably (and) conserve marine biodiversity.” In some cases, it can lead to the “collapse” of local fisheries, according to the UN.

A wider issue

The problems faced in Argentina are part of a wider pattern of unregulated fishing conducted by Chinese fishing fleets across the globe. Having depleted its own domestic fishing resources, similar Chinese flotillas have been spotted off the coast of Western Africa, in parts of the disputed South China Sea and around South America.

Driving the expansion of China’s global fishing footprint is the ever-growing demand. As China grows richer, its appetite for seafood has also soared. Once a luxury reserved for coastal elites, shrimp, squid, and saltwater fish have become everyday dishes in inland Chinese cities. The country is now the world’s largest seafood consumer and, by one estimate, is expected to drive 40% of the world’s seafood consumption growth by 2030.

Approaching the fleet of fishing vessels at night is akin to watching a sunrise, Schvartzman recounted. Others have described the flotilla as a “floating city” which fills the entire field of view, he recalled, having spent over a decade monitoring overfishing off the coast of Argentina.

“(Only) when you get closer, you find that each light is… a vessel with hundreds of very powerful lights used to fish squid,” Schvartzman says.

By comparison, the Argentine fleet that was authorized to fish inside the EEZ consists of between 70 and 75 ships, according to Darío Sócrate, the executive director of the Argentine Chamber of Squid Jig Owners.

This imbalance harms Argentine fishermen, Sócrate says. He estimates that local fishermen only catch half of what they could have because of the foreign fishing activities.

“You don’t have any place in the world where in a short strip of ocean, you have more than 550 vessels fishing without any regulation,” Schvartzman said. “And the environmental impact is because (of) this.”

“For the species, for the ecosystem, it doesn’t matter if the vessel is one mile farther or closer… the impact is the same.”

Russian missiles killed 11 people overnight in strikes on Ukraine’s eastern city of Dobropillia, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday, saying such attacks “prove that Russia’s goals are unchanged.”

The attacks come as the Ukrainian war is at a critical point, with the United States having halted military aid and intelligence sharing with Kyiv as part of efforts to pressure it into accepting a peace agreement. The move has left Ukraine even more vulnerable to Russian attacks.

On Friday, after threatening Russia with sanctions to force through a ceasefire, US President Donald Trump said that his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin was “doing what anybody else would do” in taking advantage of the current battlefield dynamics.

In addition to those killed, the latest strikes injured more than 30 others, Zelensky said, including five children.

Authorities said that more people could be trapped under the rubble, with at least eight residential buildings in the area damaged in the attack.

The Ukrainian president described the strikes as “a vile and inhumane tactic of intimidation that Russians often use.”

“Therefore, it is crucial to continue to do everything to protect lives, strengthen our air defense, and increase sanctions against Russia,” Zelensky said, adding that “everything that helps Putin finance the war must break.”

Zelensky has said he will meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia next week ahead of negotiations between Kyiv and Washington. After that, his team will stay in Saudi Arabia “to work with our American partners,” he added.

Local officials said on Saturday that over the past day, Russian attacks had killed at least 23 people and injured more than 50 in eastern and southern Ukraine.

In addition to those killed in Dobropillia, Russian attacks elsewhere in Donetsk killed nine others and wounded 13, according to local authorities.

Ukraine’s emergency service said that a drone attack in the eastern Kharkiv region also killed three people and injured seven, while five people were injured in attacks on the southern Kherson region, according to local officials.

Ukraine’s air force said it had shot down 79 out of 145 drones launched by Russia overnight, while 54 drones did not reach their target.

Russia also used at least three missiles in its attack, the air force said, adding that it shot down at least one of the projectiles.

The attacks came just days after a deadly Russian airstrike on Kryvyi Rih, the hometown of Zelensky.

The seismic shift of the past fortnight is hard to digest.

Ukraine and its allies hope, deeply, that the plank Kyiv has been slammed in the face with, is – to paraphrase US President Donald Trump’s presidential envoy to Ukraine – just to get its attention. That the White House is merely pausing military aid and intelligence sharing, demanding about half of the country’s mineral wealth to repay an alleged debt, and expecting a public apology from its president, as a negotiating ploy. That this is just tough talk ahead of a hard deal.

But a deeper change is apparent, and one that Europe has been reluctant to accept, and is scrambling to adjust to. The Trump administration sees itself not as an ally to Ukraine and its European backers, but as an intermediary between them and Moscow, hoping to rehabilitate Russia on the world stage. Trump has said he is “seriously considering” more sanctions on Moscow. Yet he has not applied them. So far, Russia has only tasted carrots and felt no sticks.

The pressure applied so far ahead of any deal is that of the contractor on its subcontractors – America on Ukraine and Europe – squeezing their terms to create a more attractive proposition for Russia. Hopes are high that a summit in Riyadh on Tuesday, between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s team, will heal the Kyiv-Washington relationship.

This is the chasm that lies beneath Trump’s insistence that Zelensky “commit to peace.” Does Trump mean an indefinable vibe only he can determine? Does he mean the germs of a European peace plan, which so far involves a prisoner swap, a partial ceasefire at sea, in the air and on energy infrastructure, followed by a limited European peacekeeping force? (Russian officials have rejected much of this already). Or does he mean another version of peace that may be concocted between Moscow and Washington, without Europe or Ukraine at the table?

This last idea should be the most troubling for European security and Ukrainian sovereignty. Keith Kellogg, Trump’s envoy to Ukraine and Russia, denied that a draft deal discussed in March 2022 in Istanbul – a rushed peace bid which fell apart in the early stages of the war due to the massacres in Irpin of Ukrainian civilians – would be the framework. But he called it a “departure point, at least.”

These proposed accords demanded that Ukraine relinquish its ambitions to join NATO, an aim which is now enshrined in the country’s constitution. The draft deal also demanded major cultural changes, the least of which was Russian being made an official language.

But above all, it tried to set limits on the armed forces Ukraine could retain which would have made them significantly smaller than Russia’s vast military. Its essence was capitulation. Not in terms of submitting to peace. But in removing Ukraine’s ability to convincingly defend itself in the event that Russia, as Ukraine says it has done more than 20 times in the last decade, violates a ceasefire and attacks again.

The pressure being laid onto Ukraine would suggest Tuesday’s meeting in Riyadh – already extremely high stakes after the Oval Office catastrophe just over a week ago – is not intended to be a simple, glad-handing moment of making up. We may learn the kind of peace Trump envisions, and how much of that mirrors Moscow’s ambitions.

Europe’s future security depends on how much “art of the deal” there is in this deal. Trump’s accustomed business world is one where he would seek to make a purchase or a contract attractive to the other side. Perhaps he might fire the head of the subcontractor if the other side didn’t like them (hence the loose talk of Zelensky’s fitness for office). He might screw down on their terms to improve margins (pausing military aid). He might flatter his prospective client (his reluctance to speak ill of Putin).

But the deal would ultimately involve the purchase of bricks and mortar, or their construction: a simple and predictable future course of actions or change in ownership of property, protected and cosseted by lawyers and courts – by the rule of law. If the other side broke the deal, Trump could sue. The precedents and courses of action were well-defined, and the rule of law on his side in ensuring the terms of the deal were kept.

Russia is not a massive fan of the rule of law. It negotiates normally to buy time to pursue its military goals. It seized the eastern Ukrainian town of Debaltseve literally during the first days of a ceasefire in 2015, negotiated following its limited invasion of Ukraine the previous year. Putin was raised in the KGB, lives on a diet of “maskirovka” (masking) and openly denied it was his troops who invaded Crimea in 2014, before laughingly accepting they were actually his a few years later. Were he a business, his credit rating would probably be distressed.

But Trump’s belief, his hunch, that Putin can be trusted and wants peace, is now guiding US policy, and rewriting America’s role in the largest war in Europe since the 1940s.

Signs of the damage this psychological blow has inflicted are already bubbling to the surface. Ukrainian forces are in peril in the Kursk region, and may lose this sliver of Russian land that was their only territorial card at the negotiating table. If they fall, the North Korean and Russian troops engaged there can then turn their attention to the rest of the eastern frontline where Moscow has made slow progress for months.

Ballistic missile and drone attacks have caused a horrific loss of civilian life this weekend, even after Trump threatened sanctions for Moscow “pounding” Ukraine, and may worsen as the pause in military aid reduces the US-supplied Patriots that Ukraine has depended on for air defense for its cities.

So far, the collapse in American support for Ukraine has mostly been confined to wild theater in foreign capitals. This week, we may learn details of the unclear peace Trump seeks. And then the grim toll of these remote, sanitary hotel meetings in suits will likely turn into dust and loss across Ukraine.