On 18 July, a jubilant chancellor of the exchequer, Rachel Reeves, proclaimed that the UK was “turning the screw on the Kremlin’s war chest”.

The UK announced that it was lowering the price cap on Russian oil products traded by maritime services. Importing Russian oil directly became illegal in December 2022 but acquiring it through third-party countries is permitted.

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A lower price cap, Reeves said, would stem “the most valuable funding stream of [Russia’s] illegal war in Ukraine even further”. But Vladimir Putin’s oil has been dribbling into Britain, irrespective of pricing regulations. Indeed, the UK has imported oil products worth millions of pounds from a refinery owned by a sanctioned Russian company, The Observer can reveal.

According to data from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air and global trade intelligence firm Kpler, UK companies imported oil to the value of £81m from India’s Vadinar refinery in the year to June 2025. They estimate that £56m-worth of this was made from Russian crude.

Vadinar is owned by Nayara Energy, whose largest shareholder is state-controlled Russian energy company Rosneft, which took a 49% stake in Nayara in 2016. Rosneft and its CEO, Igor Sechin, were sanctioned by the UK in 2022 and the company has also been sanctioned by the US.

The companies which bought the oil were Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s national oil company, France’s Total Energies and the British multinationals Shell and BP. None responded to The Observer’s request for comment.

Over this period, the UK imported a total of £1.1bn of oil products from three refineries in India which used Russian crude oil. On average, 55% of these refineries’ stock consisted of Russian crude. An estimated £560m of these imported oil products were made from Russian crude.

Last month the EU, in its 18th sanctions package, imposed a ban on imports of products made from crude oil originating in Russia.

The bloc also imposed sanctions on Nayara Energy.

Meanwhile, Putin’s war on Ukraine grinds on. Last Wednesday, three soldiers were killed and 18 were wounded in a Russian strike on a Ukrainian army training ground.

Photograph by Bloomberg/Getty