US hits Russian oil with toughest sanctions yet in bid to give Ukraine, Trump leverage

The US Treasury imposed sanctions on Gazprom Neft and Surgutneftegas, which explore for, produce and sell oil as well as 183 vessels that have shipped Russian oil. (AFP/File)
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Updated 11 January 2025
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US hits Russian oil with toughest sanctions yet in bid to give Ukraine, Trump leverage

  • US sanctions seen costing Russia billions of dollars a month
  • US official sees no danger of global crude oil shortage

WASHINGTON/NEW DELHI/LONDON: US President Joe Biden’s administration imposed its broadest package of sanctions so far targeting Russia’s oil and gas revenues on Friday, in an effort to give Kyiv and Donald Trump’s incoming team leverage to reach a deal for peace in Ukraine.
The move is meant to cut Russia’s revenues for continuing the war in Ukraine that has killed more than 12,300 civilians and reduced cities to rubble since Moscow invaded in February, 2022.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a post on X that the measures announced on Friday will “deliver a significant blow” to Moscow. “The less revenue Russia earns from oil ... the sooner peace will be restored,” Zelensky added.
Daleep Singh, a top White House economic and national security adviser, said in a statement that the measures were the “most significant sanctions yet on Russia’s energy sector, by far the largest source of revenue for (President Vladimir) Putin’s war.”
The US Treasury imposed sanctions on Gazprom Neft and Surgutneftegas, which explore for, produce and sell oil as well as 183 vessels that have shipped Russian oil, many of which are in the so-called shadow fleet of aging tankers operated by non-Western companies. The sanctions also include networks that trade the petroleum.
Many of those tankers have been used to ship oil to India and China as a price cap imposed by the Group of Seven countries in 2022 has shifted trade in Russian oil from Europe to Asia. Some tankers have shipped both Russian and Iranian oil.
The Treasury also rescinded a provision that had exempted the intermediation of energy payments from sanctions on Russian banks.
The sanctions should cost Russia billions of dollars per month if sufficiently enforced, another US official told reporters in a call.
“There is not a step in the production and distribution chain that’s untouched and that gives us greater confidence that evasion is going to be even more costly for Russia,” the official said.
Gazprom Neft said the sanctions were unjustified and illegitimate and it will continue to operate.

US ‘no longer constrained’ by tight oil supply
The measures allow a wind-down period until March 12 for sanctioned entities to finish energy transactions.
Still, sources in Russian oil trade and Indian refining said the sanctions will cause severe disruption of Russian oil exports to its major buyers India and China.
Global oil prices jumped more than 3 percent ahead of the Treasury announcement, with Brent crude nearing $80 a barrel, as a document mapping out the sanctions circulated among traders in Europe and Asia.
Geoffrey Pyatt, the US assistant secretary for energy resources at the State Department, said there were new volumes of oil expected to come online this year from the US, Guyana, Canada and Brazil and possibly out of the Middle East will fill in for any lost Russian supply.
“We see ourselves as no longer constrained by tight supply in global markets the way we were when the price cap mechanism was unveiled,” Pyatt told Reuters.
The sanctions are part of a broader effort, as the Biden administration has furnished Ukraine with $64 billion in military aid since the invasion, including $500 million this week for air defense missiles and support equipment for fighter jets.
Friday’s move followed US sanctions in November on banks including Gazprombank, Russia’s largest conduit to the global energy business, and earlier last year on dozens of tankers carrying Russian oil.
The Biden administration believes that November’s sanctions helped drive Russia’s rouble to its weakest level since the beginning of the invasion and pushed the Russian central bank to raise its policy rate to a record level of over 20 percent.
“We expect our direct targeting of the energy sector will aggravate these pressures on the Russian economy that have already pushed up inflation to almost 10 percent and reinforce a bleak economic outlook for 2025 and beyond,” one of the officials said.

Reversal would involve congress
One of the Biden officials said it was “entirely” up to the President-elect Trump, a Republican, who takes office on Jan. 20, when and on what terms he might lift sanctions imposed during the Biden era.
But to do so he would have to notify Congress and give it the ability to take a vote of disapproval, he said. Many Republican members of Congress had urged Biden to impose Friday’s sanctions.
“Trump’s people can’t just come in and quietly lift everything that Biden just did. Congress would have to be involved,” said Jeremy Paner, a partner at the law firm Hughes Hubbard & Reed.
The return of Trump has sparked hope of a diplomatic resolution to end Moscow’s invasion but also fears in Kyiv that a quick peace could come at a high price for Ukraine.
Advisers to Trump have floated proposals that would effectively cede large parts of Ukraine to Russia for the foreseeable future.
The Trump transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the new sanctions.
The military aid and oil sanctions “provide the next administration a considerable boost to their and Ukraine’s leverage in brokering a just and durable peace,” one of the officials said.


Captive Ukrainians address Russian court in emotional statements

Updated 11 sec ago
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Captive Ukrainians address Russian court in emotional statements

Moscow has also taken an unknown number of civilians into Russia from occupied Ukrainian territory
“I have never served in the Ukrainian army, I served in the Soviet army, more than 30 years ago,” Oleg Zharkov, whom prosecutors want to jail for 19.5 years, told the court

WARSAW: Four Ukrainian men taken captive by Russia at the start of its invasion gave emotional statements in court this week as they faced massive sentences for “seizure of power” and terrorism, Russian media reported Thursday.
Two of the four left the Ukrainian army years before Moscow launched its full-scale attack in 2022, while another had never taken up arms, according to the Mediazona news outlet.
On top of taking thousands of Ukrainian troops captive since launching its 2022 attack, Moscow has also taken an unknown number of civilians into Russia from occupied Ukrainian territory.
“I have never served in the Ukrainian army, I served in the Soviet army, more than 30 years ago,” Oleg Zharkov, whom prosecutors want to jail for 19.5 years, told the court, according to a transcript published by the Mediazona website Thursday.
“It’s no secret that in any military unit not only soldiers work but electricians, plumbers, handymen... People like me.”
The four spoke at a military court in Russia’s Rostov-on-Don late Wednesday, most of whom were captured during the 2022 siege of Mariupol.
All of them served in Ukraine’s Azov battalion — banned in Russia — at various points in time, some of whom worked in civilian roles supporting the army such as cooks or plumbers.
They are among 24 accused of taking part in a terrorist organization and trying to overthrow Russian authorities — despite not living in Russian territory before their arrest. Two of the other 20 were exchanged in prisoner swaps, while one died in custody last year.
Oleksandr Mukhin, facing 22 years, served in the Azov battalion for a year between 2017 and 2018.
“I’m a former serviceman, let’s start from that,” he said. He was working as a security guard when Moscow attacked.
He said he was taken from his home in Mariupol in March 2022 by “some people, beaten, put a sack on my head and taken away.”
“On Russophobia... How can I criticize someone for speaking Russian when I’m a Russian speaker?“
Soldier Mykyta Tymonin said he had seen torture in custody.
“Sitting in Rostov, you do not feel that there is a war between Russia and Ukraine, and in Ukraine people feel it: many people die, children. Many families are forced to go abroad,” he said.
Anatoliy Grytsyk said he had been a soldier his whole professional life and served in Bosnia, Kuwait and Kosovo.
He said his wife had been “shot in the street in front of him.”
“I cannot tell people what I feel, what I went through, what your country did to mine,” he said.
“God forbid you ever feel this.”

First-time asylum applications in EU fall 13 percent in 2024, Eurostat says

Updated 19 min 16 sec ago
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First-time asylum applications in EU fall 13 percent in 2024, Eurostat says

  • Eurostat reported 912,000 first-time asylum requests from non-EU citizens
  • Syrians made up the largest share of applicants

KYIV: First-time applications from people seeking asylum in European Union countries fell by 13 percent last year, the first decline in them since 2020, data from the bloc’s statistics office Eurostat showed on Thursday.
Eurostat reported 912,000 first-time asylum requests from non-EU citizens across the bloc’s 27 member states, down from more than 1 million in 2023.
Syrians made up the largest share of applicants, like every year since 2013, accounting for 16 percent of the first-time requests last year. The next biggest groups came from Venezuela and Afghanistan, accounting for 8 percent each.
Eurostat said nearly 148,000 first-time applications came from Syria in 2024, down 19.2 percent from a year earlier.
Of the total number of applications for international protection in EU countries, more than three quarters were received by Germany, Spain, Italy and France. Unaccompanied minors made up 3.9 percent of the applicants, Eurostat said.


Indian forces kill 30 Maoist rebels, one soldier dead

Updated 25 min 48 sec ago
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Indian forces kill 30 Maoist rebels, one soldier dead

  • An Indian paramilitary soldier was also killed in one of two separate skirmishes
  • Another four rebels were killed in a separate clash in the state’s south

NEW DELHI: Indian forces killed at least 30 Maoist rebels Thursday in one of the deadliest jungle clashes since the government ramped up efforts to crush the long-running insurgency.
More than 10,000 people have been killed in the decades-long “Naxalite” rebellion, whose members say they are fighting for the rights of marginalized people in India’s resource-rich central regions.
An Indian paramilitary soldier was also killed in one of two separate skirmishes that broke out in central Chhattisgarh state, both of which carried on through the day, according to police.
Bastar Inspector General of Police Sundarraj Pattilingam told AFP that the soldier had been killed during a skirmish that broke out in Bijapur district, where 26 guerrillas had also been killed.
Another four rebels were killed in a separate clash in the state’s south.
Searches at both battle sites saw security forces recovering caches of arms and ammunition from both areas.
“The (Narendra) Modi government is moving forward with a ruthless approach against Naxalites and is adopting a zero tolerance policy against those Naxalites who are not surrendering,” interior minister Amit Shah wrote on social media platform X.
The rebels, known as Naxalites after the district where their armed campaign began in 1967, were inspired by the Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong.
Shah has repeatedly vowed that India’s government would crush the remnants of the rebellion by the end of March next year.
A crackdown by security forces killed around 287 rebels last year, an overwhelming majority of them in Chhattisgarh, according to government data.
More than 80 Maoists had already been killed so far this year, according to a tally on Sunday by the Press Trust of India news agency.
The Maoists demand land, jobs and a share of the region’s immense natural resources for local residents.
They made inroads in a number of remote communities across India’s east and south, and the movement gained in strength and numbers until the early 2000s.
New Delhi then deployed tens of thousands of troops in a stretch of territory known as the “Red Corridor.”
The conflict has also seen scores of deadly attacks on government forces. A roadside bomb killed at least nine Indian troops in January.


Putin must stop ‘unnecessary demands’ that prolong war, Zelensky tells EU

Updated 53 min 3 sec ago
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Putin must stop ‘unnecessary demands’ that prolong war, Zelensky tells EU

  • “Sanctions must remain in place until Russia starts withdrawing from our land,” he said

BRUSSELS: Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said Moscow must stop making “unnecessary demands” that extend the war, calling for sanctions on Russia to remain in place until it begins pulling out of Ukrainian territory.
“Putin must stop making unnecessary demands that only prolong the war and must start fulfilling what he promises the world,” he told EU leaders by video call, according to an official transcript.
“Sanctions must remain in place until Russia starts withdrawing from our land and fully compensates for the damage caused by its aggression.”


UK PM Starmer: We must be ready to react quickly if Ukraine peace deal struck

Updated 20 March 2025
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UK PM Starmer: We must be ready to react quickly if Ukraine peace deal struck

  • “(Our) plans are focusing on keeping the sky safe, the sea safe and the border safe and secure in Ukraine,” Starmer said

LONDON: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Thursday it was important Britain and its allies were able to react immediately should there be a peace deal struck between Russia and Ukraine.
His comments, made during a visit to a nuclear submarine facility, come on the day military chiefs from dozens of countries meet in Britain to discuss planning for a possible peacekeeping force in Ukraine.
“(Our) plans are focusing on keeping the sky safe, the sea safe and the border safe and secure in Ukraine, and working with the Ukrainians,” Starmer told reporters.
“We’re working at pace because we don’t know if there’ll be a deal. I certainly hope there will be, but if there’s a deal, it’s really important that we’re able to react straight away.”