EU sanctions Georgia refinery in crackdown on Russian oil revenue

Give them some credit

BSP said earlier this month that it would stop refining Russian crude from August-September, and instead source crude from Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan.

A senior EU official said discussions with Kulevi were ongoing and the refinery had committed to diversifying away from Russian crude.

“We’ll give them some credit, but we want to see…that they do what they promised, and then we can propose to the council to delist them,” the official told reporters in Brussels.

Georgia and Russia have had no formal diplomatic ties since their brief 2008 war, but Tbilisi has drawn closer to Moscow under the ruling Georgian Dream party, government critics say, and has boosted its own imports of Russian oil.