EU bankrolling Putin with growing Russian fuel buys from India, report warns

4 comments

1. **Submission Statement**

   The article “EU Bankrolling Putin with Growing Russian Fuel Buys from India, Report Warns” provides a critical analysis of the European Union’s growing fuel purchases from Indian refineries reliant on Russian crude. Despite the EU’s sanctions and price caps targeting Moscow’s oil exports, the report underscores how these measures are being circumvented through third-country refining loopholes.

   This report from the Center for the Study of Democracy highlights key findings, including the EU’s increased expenditure on fuel imports processed from Russian crude and the role of India’s major refineries in facilitating this trade. It also examines the use of a “shadow fleet” of tankers with opaque ownership to bypass sanctions and notes the implications for funding Russia’s war effort in Ukraine.

   The findings call into question the effectiveness of EU sanctions and urge Brussels to take firmer action, such as banning imports from refineries heavily reliant on Russian crude and tightening financial restrictions. The article provides a nuanced perspective on the complexities of enforcing sanctions and the unintended consequences of global oil trade dynamics.

2. I’m unsure how much money Russia actually makes off of this? If they’re buying from Indian refineries shouldn’t the higher prices just…go to Indian companies? The cut Russia gets from exporting raw petroleium should be…notably lower?

   You can’t shut down Russian exports entirely and if the goal is to not give Russia any demand whatsoever, you need alternatives and the article doesn’t speak about this at all. If you buy more from OPEC members, then Russia has to fill in the vaccum for non-Western countries because OPEC won’t increase the total supply (oil prices) so Russia still gets to export oil.

   So like besides long term invesment in nuclear, renewables and trying to import more from North America…what do you even do? Why can’t the US help plug the gap?

3. I’m from India and blog about the Ukraine war.
   The problem for Europe was that after shutting some of its refineries, it does not have the capacity to refine all the oil it imports. It was buying refined oil from Russia. In Russia’s absence, India is the only country with excess refining capacity – and low processing cost.
   The EU worded its sanctions regulations to say that once Russian crude is blended with oil
   from other sources and refined, its no longer Russian. The refining in India is done with a `wink and nod’ from Europe.

4. That’s how the system(sanctions) are designed to work. I don’t see anything wrong with what Indian, EU or US are doing.

   [US has not asked India to cut Russian oil purchases, American official says](https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/us-has-not-asked-india-cut-russian-oil-purchases-american-official-says-2024-04-04/)

   U.S. Treasury assistant secretary for economic policy Van Nostrand said that buyers can purchase Russian oil at deeper discounts outside of the price cap mechanism, if they do not use Western services like insurance and broking, thus limiting Moscow’s sales avenues.

   [US Ambassador to India Eric Garcetti emphasised that Washington wanted India to buy Russian oil at discounted prices to contain the rise in the price of an essential commodity and curtail Russia’s funding in the context light of its war in Ukraine.

   [Speaking in an interview with CNN-News18, the US Ambassador said “we recognised that oil was a necessity for all economies” while answering a question on his somewhat suggestive indication that the US wanted India to continue to buy Russian oil.](https://www.businesstoday.in/india/story/not-just-the-us-but-the-whole-world-wanted-us-ambassador-eric-garcetti-on-indian-purchase-of-russian-oil-429751-2024-05-16)

Comments are closed.