Sanctions have done nothing to limit Russian exports of oil
All they have done is drive up prices for Western consumers
Europe, United States and Canada all jumped aboard the “sanctions” bandwagon rather than use military force to compel Russia to abandon its war with Ukraine. It is hard to imagine Vladmir Putin thinking providing arms and financial support to Ukraine is not war with Russia, and even harder to understand why leaders of the NATO countries think sanctions would prompt Putin to withdraw.
All that the NATO bloc has accomplished is permitting rampant bloodshed to continue in Ukraine while encouraging Russia to find other markets despite the desperate shortage of fossil fuels in the West. Russia’s seaborne shipments of crude oil reached 3.8 million barrels a day last week, the highest since April 2022. India tripled its purchases of oil from Russia over the past year. Apologists for the Western leaders claim Russia is being forced to sell its oil at “deeper discounts” but in reality Russia is selling its oil at discounts from much higher prices and realizing prices higher than it was receiving before the Ukraine invasion. As of last September, Russia had earned 158 billion Euros from its oil sales since the Ukraine war started.
On February 5, 2023, new sanctions will be imposed that attempt to prevent Russian crude from access to markets. What is likely is that India will buy the Russian crude, refine it, and ship it as diesel fuel to Europe.
Sanctions have seen Russia’s economy contract by about 3% in 2022 and will likely see a 1% contraction in 2023 with growth recurring in 2024. That is not much different than what Europe is experiencing. Europe’s economy is expected to be flat at best in 2023 and Europe is hamstrung by high inflation. Only a warmer than usual winter has prevent the shortage of natural gas in Europe from leading to a catastrophic fall in economic activity, and the winter is far from over. As it stands, the elites gathering in Davos for the World Economic Forum believe the world economies will enter recession this year.
There is no sign the war in Ukraine will end any time soon. Weak leaders in United Kingdom, France, United States and Canada eschew military action pretending it would lead to nuclear war (despite the reality that mutually assured destruction is no more and no less effective today than in the past five decades). Sending troops to support Ukraine is hardly an escalation given Russian troops are there now and United States and other signed the Budapest Agreement in the Clinton years promising to protect Ukraine’s independence. The flim flam out of Washington, Ottawa, Whitehall and Brussels is simply that - flim flam. Leaders are simply afraid boots on the ground would be unpopular with voters and would rather let thousands of Ukranians die at the hands of Russian troops than get directly involved beyond perpetuating the war by sending drib and drabs of weapons to Ukraine and a lot of money the ultimate use of which is unclear. Getting re-elected seems more important the Ukrainian lives.
Some of that money did find its way back to United States through now bankrupt FTX who funneled money from Ukraine back to Democrats running for election in 2022. It would be interesting to find out the precise details of the Biden family relationship with Ukraine officials and trace the money trail from Ukraine to Biden. The recent revelation that drug addict Hunter Biden was paying his Dad about $50,000 a month in rent for the Delaware home where classified documents keep turning up years after they were taken from Washington points an ugly picture of the Biden household and President Biden’s admission (or at least claim) that no visitor logs were kept for his Wilmington home suggests it will be hard to find out who had access to the materials that should not have been there, why they were there at all (apparently for years), and, why Democrats are soft-pedalling the information.
We have heard a lot about “corruption” pointed at Donald Trump by Democrats. It seems that any “corruption” in Washington was by no means limited to Trump. Biden has been exposed as inept, incapable of dealing properly with classified documents, and in all likelihood corrupt based on evidence he was in fact involved in his son’s disgraceful activities.
Biden's crime family with Ukraine probably go all the way back to 2004 during cia orange revolution. But hunter biden got involved in 2014 before the Maidan Revolution.
Remember career politician like Biden got rich being a politician while Trump got poorer by being a politician. But Canadian hated Trump, how naive and shameful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmc7JUAYBC8
Those “sanctions” remind me sanctions against Mussolini’s Italia after it invaded Abyssinia - sanctions had so many exceptions and excuses that basically did nothing to Italian military potential. The only serious restriction were about Aluminium exports to Italia - but irony was in fact that Italia had a surplus in Aluminium production so those “tough sanctions” had zero effect.