As Donald Trump’s ultimatum to Vladimir Putin to cease fire or face crippling sanctions looms, the administration’s top Russia negotiator Steve Witkoff has arrived in Moscow for talks.
Witkoff, a real estate developer and golfing buddy of Trump’s, brings no Russia expertise to the table. But he will deliver the one concrete threat that his boss in the White House has articulated – to impose trade tariffs on India to punish it for importing Russian oil.
“India … doesn’t care how many people in Ukraine are being killed by the Russian War Machine,” Trump wrote on social media earlier this week. “Because of this, I will be substantially raising the Tariff paid by India to the USA.”
India is indeed the world’s biggest importer of Russian crude oil – but it’s actually the EU that pays more money into Putin’s coffers. Russia continues to be Europe’s second largest supplier of Liquefied Natural Gas (Lng), and Russian crude oil continues to flow through the Druzhba pipeline into Slovakia.
Yet Europe has not been threatened by Trump – nor for that matter have US allies Turkey and Japan, also major customers of Moscow’s gas.
It’s not just Trump’s hypocrisy that has the Indians up in arms – it’s the unfairness of being punished for breaking no laws. Russian oil exports are not sanctioned by the EU or the US, but they are subject to a price cap designed to keep world oil supply steady while limiting the profits to the Kremlin.
India has played by the rules, buying Russian oil at capped prices then refining it and exporting much of it on to Europe. And there’s the rub. If India were to stop buying Russian crude, a worldwide oil price panic would quickly follow. Currently Moscow is the world’s second biggest oil exporter after Saudi Arabia, shipping 4.5 million barrels of crude a day to global markets.
Back in March 2022, soon after Putin’s invasion, fears that Russian oil would be pushed out of the market drove Brent crude prices to $137 per barrel – nearly double 2025 prices. Analysts fear that a similar panic today would push the price to $200.
But perhaps that economic pain – in the form of spiking prices at the pump, an economic downturn in Europe and the US, and strong inflationary pressure – would be worth it to starve Putin’s war machine of oil money?
Think again. In the small print of every one of the EU sanctions packages is a long series of carve-outs and exceptions that allow countries like Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic to import Russian crude.
The eighteenth (and latest) European sanctions package supposedly bans the import of refined oil products originating from Russian crude. But as well as being technically impossible to verify, exceptions have been made for Canada, Norway, Switzerland, the UK, and the US, rendering the supposed “ban” toothless. And let us not forget that Russian gas is not sanctioned or price capped at all.
In short, Trump’s imposition of tariffs on India is unfair and unworkable – not least because it’s Europe, not India or China, which remains both the world’s biggest importer of Russian energy in dollar terms, as well as the biggest contributor to Putin’s war chest.
Russia’s media have made a great fuss over Witkoff’s arrival in Moscow. “Dialogue will prevail,” tweeted Kirill Dmitriev, the Stanford, Harvard, Goldman Sachs and McKinsey-trained former banker who is now the Kremlin’s point man on talks with Washington.
And given Witkoff previous gullibility and haplessness – last time he used a Kremlin interpreter instead of one from the US Embassy – it’s more than possible that the wily old-Soviet-school dissemblers like veteran foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and Putin himself will succeed in fobbing Trump off with some pretended concessions or yet another round of pointless peace talks.
Putin will proceed on the Taco assumption – Trump always chickens out. And all the while his troops will push further into Donbas and his missiles kill more civilians in Ukraine’s cities.
As Donald Trump’s ultimatum to Vladimir Putin to cease fire or face crippling sanctions looms, the administration’s top Russia negotiator Steve Witkoff has arrived in Moscow for talks.
Witkoff, a real estate developer and golfing buddy of Trump’s, brings no Russia expertise to the table. But he will deliver the one concrete threat that his boss in the White House has articulated – to impose trade tariffs on India to punish it for importing Russian oil.
“India … doesn’t care how many people in Ukraine are being killed by the Russian War Machine,” Trump wrote on social media earlier this week. “Because of this, I will be substantially raising the Tariff paid by India to the USA.”
India is indeed the world’s biggest importer of Russian crude oil – but it’s actually the EU that pays more money into Putin’s coffers. Russia continues to be Europe’s second largest supplier of Liquefied Natural Gas (Lng), and Russian crude oil continues to flow through the Druzhba pipeline into Slovakia.
Yet Europe has not been threatened by Trump – nor for that matter have US allies Turkey and Japan, also major customers of Moscow’s gas.
It’s not just Trump’s hypocrisy that has the Indians up in arms – it’s the unfairness of being punished for breaking no laws. Russian oil exports are not sanctioned by the EU or the US, but they are subject to a price cap designed to keep world oil supply steady while limiting the profits to the Kremlin.
India has played by the rules, buying Russian oil at capped prices then refining it and exporting much of it on to Europe. And there’s the rub. If India were to stop buying Russian crude, a worldwide oil price panic would quickly follow. Currently Moscow is the world’s second biggest oil exporter after Saudi Arabia, shipping 4.5 million barrels of crude a day to global markets.
Back in March 2022, soon after Putin’s invasion, fears that Russian oil would be pushed out of the market drove Brent crude prices to $137 per barrel – nearly double 2025 prices. Analysts fear that a similar panic today would push the price to $200.
But perhaps that economic pain – in the form of spiking prices at the pump, an economic downturn in Europe and the US, and strong inflationary pressure – would be worth it to starve Putin’s war machine of oil money?
Think again. In the small print of every one of the EU sanctions packages is a long series of carve-outs and exceptions that allow countries like Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic to import Russian crude.
The eighteenth (and latest) European sanctions package supposedly bans the import of refined oil products originating from Russian crude. But as well as being technically impossible to verify, exceptions have been made for Canada, Norway, Switzerland, the UK, and the US, rendering the supposed “ban” toothless. And let us not forget that Russian gas is not sanctioned or price capped at all.
In short, Trump’s imposition of tariffs on India is unfair and unworkable – not least because it’s Europe, not India or China, which remains both the world’s biggest importer of Russian energy in dollar terms, as well as the biggest contributor to Putin’s war chest.
Russia’s media have made a great fuss over Witkoff’s arrival in Moscow. “Dialogue will prevail,” tweeted Kirill Dmitriev, the Stanford, Harvard, Goldman Sachs and McKinsey-trained former banker who is now the Kremlin’s point man on talks with Washington.
And given Witkoff previous gullibility and haplessness – last time he used a Kremlin interpreter instead of one from the US Embassy – it’s more than possible that the wily old-Soviet-school dissemblers like veteran foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and Putin himself will succeed in fobbing Trump off with some pretended concessions or yet another round of pointless peace talks.
Putin will proceed on the Taco assumption – Trump always chickens out. And all the while his troops will push further into Donbas and his missiles kill more civilians in Ukraine’s cities.