Gordon G. Chang
"The oil weapon alone will not win the war in Ukraine, but it might just have brought Vladimir Putin to the bargaining table," Rebecca Grant of the Arlington, Va.-based Lexington Institute told Newsweek last week, referring to sanctions announced by the Treasury Department on Jan. 10.
The oil weapon seems, at least for the moment, to be working. Putin, who had been resistant to negotiations to end the war, agreed to begin discussions, as President Donald Trump announced last Wednesday in a Truth Social posting.
On Jan. 10, Treasury imposed a broad range of measures targeting Russia's oil sales, especially the vessels of its "shadow" or "dark" fleet, the ships that lift sanctioned oil from Russia.
Treasury hit 183 vessels, 143 of them tankers. The measures cover ships carrying an estimated 42 percent of Russia's seaborne oil exports, according to data and analytics platform Kpler. Lloyd's List reports the number could be as high as 50 percent. The U.S. sanctions come after the United Kingdom and the European Union in December listed 90 ships.
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