{"id":41450,"date":"2026-05-20T11:15:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T11:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/41450\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T11:15:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T11:15:10","slug":"starmer-criticized-for-easing-russia-sanctions-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/41450\/","title":{"rendered":"Starmer criticized for easing Russia sanctions \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ministers pledged earlier this year they would close the loophole in the spring; a commitment the government was still making as recently as last month. However, their position appears to have shifted following shockwaves in the energy market caused by the conflict in the Middle East. The Trump administration has also <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2026\/05\/18\/treasury-extends-russian-oil-sanctions-waiver-for-another-month-00926158\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">eased energy sanctions<\/a> on Russia in recent weeks.<\/p>\n<p>Conservative Leader Kemi Badenoch contrasted the decision to ease sanctions on Russian-origin oil products with the Labour government\u2019s plan to restrict exploration for domestically-sourced oil. \u201cWe are now importing from Russia instead of drilling in the North Sea,\u201d she said in a post on X. <\/p>\n<p>Alexander Kirk, sanctions campaigner at the Urgewald group, said: \u201cCelebrations will be happening in the Kremlin today. Russian state media is already seizing on this as proof that Western resolve can be weakened when fuel prices rise.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe danger here,\u201d Kirk added, \u201cis not just the economic signal, but the political message it sends. Moscow will read this as weakness.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A government spokesperson <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/cy42x3g7r89o\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">told the BBC <\/a>that ministers were \u201ccommitted to strengthening our sanctions on Russia\u201d but would also protect \u201ccritical supply chains.\u201d The government was approached for further comment. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ministers pledged earlier this year they would close the loophole in the spring; a commitment the government was&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41451,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[7786,9643,8845,516,971,234,519,2169,501,1233,24,94,186,520,160,42,3766,225,484,522,167,5,523,6,461,462,4108],"class_list":["post-41450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-uk","tag-andy-burnham","tag-aviation","tag-coal","tag-conflict","tag-diesel","tag-energy","tag-energy-markets","tag-fuels","tag-imports","tag-india","tag-iran","tag-keir-starmer","tag-kemi-badenoch","tag-kremlin","tag-markets","tag-middle-east","tag-north-sea","tag-oil","tag-russia","tag-sanctions","tag-supply-chains","tag-uk","tag-ukraine","tag-united-kingdom","tag-united-states","tag-war","tag-wes-streeting"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116606620955698073","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41450\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}