The sanctions on Russian oil weren’t intended to keep Russian oil out of the market. They were designed to prevent Russia from profiting richly from its oil sales.

Removal of all Russian fossil fuels would have had a dramatic impact on the world markets because the supply disappearing overnight driving up the cost of non-Russian supplies. The way the sanctions worked made it so that Russia could only sell its oil for cheap to the markets are still supplied, yet they can’t make huge profits from it because there are so few that would buy it directly.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Millions of barrels of fuel made from Russian oil are still being imported to the UK despite sanctions imposed over the war in Ukraine, research claims.

But two separate reports, shared exclusively with the BBC, suggest the rules on refining enable products made from Russian crude oil to arrive on UK soil.

In a separate research paper, campaign group Global Witness estimated that throughout 2023, some 5.2 million barrels of refined petroleum products that had been produced from Russian crude oil were imported to the UK.

An oil industry source added that as the UK is not self-sufficient in diesel it has to buy it from somewhere, and if it doesn’t get it from India it risks paying a higher price elsewhere, and passing the cost on to the consumer.

But Oleg Ustenko, economic adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, called on Western allies of Ukraine to toughen up the current sanctions to include a full ban on all refined oil products derived from Russian crude.

Last year, some US lawmakers also pushed for a ban on fuel imports from refineries that use Russian crude oil, with US representatives Lloyd Doggett and Joe Wilson introducing a bill to close the refining loophole.

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