West is ‘missing obscure sanctions that could set back Russia’s war machine’ | Russia
A US group has outlined several vague but potentially significant sanctions that it says could seriously disrupt Russia’s war effort in Ukraine after the Kremlin targeted its largest oil companies last month.
Previous sanctions have been imposed on Russian energy companies, banks, military suppliers and the “shadow fleet” of ships. transport Russian oil.
But Dekleptocracy, a non-governmental group investigating Russia’s war economy, says the chemicals used to make mechanical lubricants and military-grade tires are a vulnerability that US, UK and EU policymakers could exploit.
Kristofer Harrison, the group’s president and a former State Department Russia expert, described the targets as “foreign and specific,” unlike microchips and oil companies that often attract the attention of governments and agencies. But these are difficult to replace and are vital to Moscow’s ability to field tanks and fight. He says decleptocracy.
“Oil shortages would seriously damage Russia’s war machine,” he wrote in his final report.
Only a handful of companies worldwide produce chemical additives for mechanical lubricants such as engine oils for tanks and cars. Nearly all of them stopped selling the chemicals to Russia at the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion. famine And complaints from drivers.
Dekleptocracy found that a Chinese company called Xinxiang Richful currently meets a large portion of Russia’s demand, supplying up to eight million kilograms a year. Richful recently established an office in Virginia. The group says blocking it, as well as several smaller suppliers, would create a shortage of mechanical oil in Russia.
Xinxiang Richful did not respond to a request for comment.
DeKleptocracy also revealed that Russia has little domestic capacity to produce vulcanization accelerators and other substances needed to produce military-grade tires.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the G7 meeting last week that most of the major sanctions options were being considered. “Well, there’s not much left for us to sanction, so we hit their big oil companies, and that’s what everyone wants,” he said.
Tom Keatinge, director of the finance and security center at the Royal United Services Institute, Britain’s leading defense think tank, said: He said Dekleptocracy’s findings were a valuable study and evidence that enforcement goals remain.
“As long as Russia successfully supplies the components it needs for its military and successfully sells its oil, the environment will continue to be rich in targets,” he said.
Russia has a strong oil industry but lacks domestic producers of many lesser-known but important chemicals, including food additives and substances used to make tires, pharmaceuticals and shampoos. Deceleptocracy says Moscow launched an initiative to produce hundreds of chemicals domestically earlier this year, further evidence of the industry’s weakness.
“We looked at the Russian economy, some of the things they absolutely need to keep their war machine running,” Harrison said. “We looked at their production facilities, their chemical base, to find the critical problems, the things the Russians couldn’t produce themselves.”
Rubio’s words came after the USA sanctioned Russian oil producers Rosneft and Lukoil in October with the aim of “disrupting” Russia’s war machine.
Keatinge said it was too early to judge whether sanctions against Rosneft and Lukoil were effective because little had been done to impose secondary sanctions against companies that continued to buy their oil.
“A successful sanctions regime relies not only on identifying new targets, but also on ensuring enforcement against already identified targets,” he said. “Ukraine’s allies should continue to enforce existing sanctions and take action against sanctions that facilitate evasion.”
Decleptocracy has been featured in previous efforts. impose sanctions Arctic LNG 2 at gas terminal. He worked with the Biden administration to identify specific elements of the project. ice class tankers – essential to its operation and vulnerable to US pressure.
“I think they’ve done an incredible job of at least showing the potential weakness that could be devastating,” said Cara Abercrombie, a former U.S. deputy secretary of defense under Joe Biden. “Maybe not permanently damaging, but certainly devastating.”
Decleptocracy is part of a larger civil society effort involving Ukrainian groups such as Razom We Stand and B4Ukraine and the Center for Defense Advanced Studies in the United States to comb through vast amounts of business data to find weaknesses in Russia’s war economy and identify sanctions targets for governments. Groups often find targets that policymakers overlook, Keatinge said.
“This is very valuable work. It regularly reveals anomalies that need to be addressed,” he said.
