As of: February 27, 2024, 2:10 p.m
By: Bona Hyun
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Split
Shadow fleets helped Putin continue his oil business.
The USA is taking stronger action against this with new sanctions.
The measures are starting to take effect.
Moscow – The USA is increasing the pressure on Russia: Vladimir Putin's ghost ships are among the targets of the latest sanctions.
Joe Biden's government wants to take tougher action against Putin's tactics to circumvent oil sanctions.
The USA has now blacklisted 14 tankers belonging to the Russian state-owned shipping company Sovcomflot.
Putin's shadow tanker is now feeling the consequences.
Putin's ghost fleet in the sights of US sanctions - the consequences are already noticeable
Sovcomflot's share price on the Moscow Stock Exchange fell by more than 8 percent after the US Treasury Department imposed sanctions on the company.
According to the latest status, the price of Sovcomflot shares is 131.2 rubles, as the state news agency
tass.ru
reports, citing trading data.
The USA is taking stronger action against Putin's evasion tactics - and is targeting the ghost ships.
© Pavel Nemecek/imago (symbol image)
For Putin, the sanctions could also massively restrict opportunities for oil trading and sanctions evasion: “Sovcomflot, as the parent company, is involved in violations of price caps and fraudulent activities,”
Spiegel
quoted a ministry official as saying.
Ships linked to Sovcomflot and its sanctioned unit Sun Ship Management have delivered at least 100 million barrels of crude oil to India since January 2023, according to the
Energy Intelligence
platform .
In 2023, India received at least 142 cargoes of Russian crude from ships now under U.S. control, Indian officials and ship tracking data show.
74 of those cargoes were
delivered by the newly sanctioned ships with ties to Sovcomflot, according to
Energy Intelligence .
USA imposes 500 new sanctions against Russia - hunt for Putin's ghost fleet
According to the British platform Riviera Maritime Media,
the blacklist
also includes a drilling ship, a trio of general cargo vessels and research ships from the fleet of the state-owned company Rosgeologia.
The company that controls the Russian shipbuilding complex Zvezda was also sanctioned.
The Ministry of Finance justifies this with the shipyard's role in Russia's military-industrial production base.
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Background: The USA imposed 500 new sanctions against Russia on Friday (February 23).
“Together with the U.S. State Department’s actions, this is the largest number of sanctions imposed since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” the U.S. Treasury Department said.
US Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo announced, among other things, further sanctions in connection with the Western price cap for Russian oil exports to third countries.
The tightening is aimed at “reducing the Kremlin’s revenue while at the same time allowing oil to reach the market.”
In response to Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, the EU and its G7 partners decided to cap oil prices.
The cap is actually intended to force Moscow to sell oil for a maximum of 60 US dollars (55 euros) per barrel (159 liters), i.e. below the world market price.
According to experts, there are problems with the implementation of the measure.
The US government announced that new export restrictions are also planned for almost 100 companies that supported Russia's war machine through the back door.
Despite sanctions against Putin, experts warn of more sophisticated evasion tactics
Since October 2023, the United States has imposed sanctions on more than 50 ships carrying Russian crude oil directly or through their owners for violating the $60 per barrel price cap imposed at the end of 2022.
According to experts, with the imposition of punitive measures against Russia, concerns also grew that Putin could resort to other evasion tactics using his ghost fleet.
“Russia's industrial-scale sanctions evasion program is becoming increasingly complicated and sophisticated,” shipping experts at Lloyd's List Intelligence warned in December 2023. This included “an ever-expanding 'dark fleet' and a nebulous network of shell companies and middlemen, that evade Western measures,” said the experts.
But so far it looks as if Putin will have to set other priorities so that his economy does not become even more vulnerable.
(bohy)