Pressmediaofindia
Related Articles
19-05-2023
HIROSHIMA: By some accounts, sanctions against Russia have left it more isolated than at any point since the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, when the allies of World War I put the country under a blockade.
At the Group of Seven summit taking place in Japan’s Hiroshima from Friday, the club of rich democracies are expected to tighten the screws further as they attempt to force Moscow to end its war in Ukraine.
In an interview with the Financial Times published on Tuesday, Josep Borrell, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, said the bloc should crack down on the importation of Indian petroleum products that use Russian oil.
The administration of US President Joe Biden is also pushing to strengthen controls on high-tech exports by reversing the presumption towards prohibiting everything that is not explicitly authorized.
Despite predictions of economic ruin, Russia’s economy has held up better than expected against the Western-led sanctions regime, shrinking only by 2.1 percent in 2022.
Although Russia’s trade with G7 countries has plummeted, China, India and Turkey have picked up much of the slack through increased imports of Russian coal, oil and gas.
Some research also suggests that Western shipping companies are involved in violating sanctions on Russian energy exports.
In a study released by the Kyiv School of Economics last month, researchers found that 96 percent of oil shipments from the Russian port of Kozmino during the first quarter of 2023 were sold above the $60 oil price cap set by the G7 last year.
“On the sanctions front, the summit will be about implementation, implementation and implementation,” Agathe Demarais, global forecasting director of the Economist Intelligence Unit, told media.
“This follows a flurry of media reports highlighting sanctions evasion from third countries, such as Turkey, Serbia, Kazakhstan and the UAE. Instead of lowering the oil price cap, the G7 will focus on tightening the effective implementation of this measure” but Demarais, who is also the author of Backfire: How Sanctions Reshape the World Against US Interests, said it is unclear if the G7 will be able to effectively plug the loopholes “given the scope of the problem and the creativity of the Kremlin to bypass sanctions”. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
