[Carnegie Politika] The sanctions deployed against Russia have failed to break Vladimir Putin’s war machine, and now the West is looking for ways to make them more potent. In doing so, Western policymakers should remain clear-eyed about potential risks and side effects.
by Sergey Vakulenko
Published on July 5, 2024
Two and a half years ago, in the run-up to Russia’s full-fledged war against Ukraine, Moscow was promised "sanctions from hell." It was widely expected that these sanctions would crush the Russian economy. That did not happen, and one of the reasons was that Russia managed to maintain its oil exports’ prewar volume and revenues. It was clear from the outset that it would be next to impossible to completely eliminate Russian oil from the global markets, but there were strong hopes that the price cap mechanism would at least put pressure on the price and put the cash flows under control of the Western coalition, which might eventually drastically reduce the resources available for the Russian military effort.
Russia, for its part, was determined to keep its oil trade outside of the Western-controlled system—and has succeeded. Initially, Russian crude prices fell significantly, and Moscow had to spend money building up a shadow fleet of tankers, since Western-owned ones were no longer available to it, but the discounts are much smaller now, and oil revenues are higher than pre-COVID and prewar levels. So far, the price cap mechanism has been ineffective.
The price cap mechanism was built on a belief that the West has a monopoly on the services needed to move oil from Russian ports to Asian refineries: that Russia would not be able to manage without Western-owned tankers, insurance underwritten by Western-led P&I clubs, or bank transactions in Western currencies passing through Western banks. That belief turned out to be incorrect. Russia managed to organize a parallel system to handle its oil trade by amassing a shadow fleet and finding alternative insurance providers.
This is a deeply unsatisfying state of affairs for Western policymakers, from both a reputational and practical point of view. First, it undermines the authority of the Western coalition and the effectiveness of future sanctions, since they are dependent on the willingness of potential sanctions violators and violation abettors to take risks, having weighed up the likely losses and rewards. Second, the failure of the price cap keeps Russian coffers full and the war machine running. Accordingly, Western governments are looking for more radical solutions and fixes.
Danish and Finnish officials have announced that they are looking for legal ways to deny passage to ships carrying Russian crude and diesel through marine chokepoints such as the Danish straits, the entrance to the Gulf of Finland, and the English Channel if they are not operating in accordance with the price cap mechanism. In all these cases, the ships would have to pass within 12 nautical miles of Danish, Finnish or Estonian, or English or French shores.
The ships in question often belong to non-Russian owners, sail under non-Russian flags, and carry cargo owned by non-Russian traders. They might have insurance certificates issued by Russian insurers that don’t belong to international insurance clubs, but those insurers had a substantial share of the oil cargo business before the war.
The 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which governs international marine traffic, cites the right of peaceful passage as a fundamental legal principle. In some cases, free passage is governed by much older treaties, such as the 1857 Copenhagen Convention for the Danish straits. Naval blockades have been tools of war and casus belli many times in history. UNCLOS was drafted and signed with the idea of eliminating this source of tensions and lowering the chances of war. As a result, it left very little room for littoral states to hinder the free passage of commercial vessels.
The challenge European policymakers are facing now, therefore, is how to make a blockade—an act often used during hostilities—look like a justified peacetime measure within the framework of conventions written to avoid hostilities. In other words, how to conduct an act of war while technically not conducting an act of war.
Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen has said: "It’s just not very easy because international maritime law is basically geared towards opening navigation and making it very difficult for any country to intervene with free traffic. The law was built for a completely different world than what we are now looking at."
It is understandable that the West prefers to take a measured approach in its conflict with Russia, sticking to commercial issues and avoiding any show of physical force. As tempting as it is to use technicalities to pursue strategic goals and justify a forceful course of action in the confrontation between Russia and the West, stopping tankers carrying Russian crude in the Danish straits could prompt an escalation on Russia’s part, such as an armed naval escort.
This approach also erodes trust and respect for the rules-based international order. Rules are commitment devices: their true value is demonstrated when they are applied against the current interests of their authors and proponents. If the conventions signed in the Cold War era are of no use today, then what is? Russia has long accused the West of hypocrisy and has justified its actions by citing double standards and manipulation of the rules to the advantage of the United States and EU. The use of UNCLOS to exercise a naval blockade against Russia will only provide Moscow with another story to tell the Global South.
The West still has the means to enforce the price cap more strictly and more broadly by going after profit-seekers who are willing to help move Russian oil for a fee and turn a blind eye to phony price cap compliance attestation. The West could also threaten secondary sanctions against Chinese and Indian buyers—if it has the will to expend political capital on the issue. But attempts to stop the physical flow of Russian oil through international straits would amount to a blockade, and will be seen as such.
That’s not to say that it’s not the right thing to do—but it should be done with a full and clear understanding of the significance of the act and possible consequences, rather than naively sleepwalking into the next level of conflict.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
05/24/2025 00:00 ||
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#1
“We Must Save Poland”: Right-Wing Candidates Unite Ahead of Final Vote Karol Nawrocki, the conservative presidential candidate backed by Poland’s main opposition party, has signed an eight-point declaration put forward by former rival, the right-wing Sławomir Mentzen, in a move to consolidate the conservative vote before the country’s final round of presidential elections.
The declaration—presented during a live-streamed event on Mentzen’s YouTube channel—includes commitments to oppose tax increases, prevent Polish troops being sent to Ukraine, and block Ukraine’s membership of NATO.
In a wide-ranging video address on Thursday evening, Benjamin Netanyahu suggested it was no coincidence that the killing of a young couple outside Washington D.C.’s Jewish museum by a pro-Palestine (apparently Marxist) activist has followed on from European leaders’ demands for Israel to end its war against Hamas terrorists, as well as their buying into "Hamas’ propaganda" on aid entering the Strip.
The Israeli prime minister pointed in particular to the false claim that 14,000 Palestinian babies would die in 48 hours because of aid blockades, saying:
The press repeats it. The mob believed it. And a young couple is then brutally gunned down in Washington.
While they started with Jews (inventing "Palestinians" out of nothing) - it never ends with the Jews. Nowadays, European elites conduct a war of extermination against their own people.
Posted by: Grom the Affective ||
05/24/2025 06:29 ||
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Bad as it was, “Joe Biden,” the figment president was merely one manifestation of a nation made mad by power-seeking demons, real-live, ill-intentioned human beings driving a runaway political machine, the party of hoaxes, hustles, and hatred. The country is just now struggling to exit a convulsion of mass mental illness. The demons are still there, though, and still hard at work trying to drag you all back into mass formation.
A central mystery is how the news media made itself the enemy of the people, and this conundrum is not at all explained by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson in their book Original Sin. It’s actually just another hustle with overtones of hoax, like everything else in the evil cavalcade of narratives spun out in the news media’s war on reality. Tapper and Marshall want you to believe that a faceless collective they call “the White House” managed to conceal “Joe Biden’s” well-advanced disintegration from the voting public, and that was... that. The media wuz fooled! Goll-lee!
Of course, that fails to explain a whole lot — such as: how come anybody watching daily video clips of “Joe Biden” in action, could not fail to see the broken old puppet he is. Alex Thompson, receiving his “award for excellence” from the White House Correspondents’ Association weeks ago said, “We just missed it.” Yeah, sure... They also apparently missed the programmatic devastation to American society that was carried out in the old stumblebum’s name.
Posted by: NoMoreBS ||
05/24/2025 00:00 ||
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[HotAir] You'll remember one of the biggest drop-mic revelations was the $20B slush fund new Environmental Protection Agency head Lee Zeldin, along with Musk's DOGE waste-huntin' hounds found stashed in a sketchy secret Citibank account.
That money was allocated to just eight climate-related NGOs in last-minute 'awards' from the Biden administration as they shoveled bucks out the door like a steam-driven locomotive's fireman flings coal. The most egregious of which was an earmarked $2B award to a Stacey Abrams-connected NGO called 'Power Forward Communities,' which was only a little over a year old and had less than $100 in the bank.
The Washington Free Beacon reports that the Biden EPA awarded a group linked to Stacey Abrams with no real track record a 2 billion dollar environmental grant in 2024.
Everyone has been dying to know more as Zeldin turned to clawing back the money.
In the meantime, other folks started digging into the Power Forward Communities (PFC) NGO, and one of them uncovered the web of deep money progressive tentacles that run all through these seemingly humanitarian organizations. Sadly, they are, in fact, usually only money laundering schemes for progressive elites and their foot soldiers.
Integral to the PFC story is a fellow named Shaun Donovan, who cut his political progressive teeth as the Commissioner of the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development. He left the city to become, first, Obama's Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and then his director of the Office of Budget Management.
When Obama left, Donovan knew he needed a new gig, so he slid on over to the Ford Foundation, which lobbies the federal government using Henry Ford's fortune. Eventually, through all his connections, he became the new CEO of Enterprise Community Partners (ECP).
The previous CEO of this non-profit NGO - one wealthy enough to boast about investing $72B for a million energy efficient homes - earned $900K a year, which is quite a chunk for a charity, you'd think. But, according to Mr Chavous' research, the co-CEO pulled down a cool $800K, and the NGO spent over 27% of all its considerable income on salaries.
What does this have to do with Power Forward Communities (PFC)?
For one thing, the well-compensated and connected CEO of ECP, Mr Donovan, is the one who then formed that NGO and bragged about scoring the $2B award for his umbrella organization.
Small, incestuous, lucrative world, these NGOs, aren't they?
It also explains what went down in Lee Zeldin's testimony to Congress yesterday about the specifics that they have been finding about the proposal that came with PFC's grant paperwork.
What was in the documents required to meet the 'eligibility requirements' for the federal handouts was so outrageous, it blew even the Biden administration EPA staff's mind. To the point where, when they were screening the paperwork, as internal documents have subsequently revealed, they wrote notes and memorandums about it to cover their own asterisks. One staff member reviewing the proposed salary structure thought they were so out of whack that they worried it might look bad should the public catch a glimpse.
But, if you look at the mothership, ECP, that's where they all are as far as numbers go.
On 12 May, PFC filed a status report with the D.C. district court claiming 'irreparable harm,' as they still could not access their Citbank funds because of mean old Lee Zeldin.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
