The European Union is once again attacking Russia and its finances, this time focusing on the so-called Russian ‘ghost fleet’, a trick that the Kremlin has been using for two years to avoid sanctions and maintain the muscle of its oil exports.
Yesterday the 27 agreed to approve a nine package of sanctions – the fifteenth – against the Putin regime and the countries and companies that help him. The details of the agreement are not yet public, but, according to the Euronews network, the sanctions package is expected to be modest this time, although it adds more pressure. As has already been mentioned, the most notable thing is that it punishes clandestine crude oil trading network that the Kremlin needs to finance the war.
This story began with the invasion of Ukraine and the price cap on Russian oil set then by the EU. With a view to damaging the Kremlin’s finances, the Council of Europe then agreed to prohibit the transport of Russian oil to third countries, unless it was at a price below a ceiling, which was set at $60 per barrel. In addition to this, Western companies were prohibited from hosting and providing financing or insurance services to these ships.
The fact is that shortly after that decision was made, the European authorities began to detect unusual traffic of Russian ships that they called ‘ghost’ because they use all kinds of tricks to evade EU sanctions. They display flags of third countries that do not submit to the EU’s foreign policy –like Liberia or Panama– and carry out transhipments and all other maintenance operations on the high seas, always in international waters, to avoid port supervision.
Spain has been the involuntary protagonist of this phenomenon, because as ABC already explained, our country is a transit point for this crude oil, which in its transit to China or India passes near Ceuta or Gibraltar. And it is an economic problem but also an environmental one, since they are old ships and the EU assumes that they lack safety measures, so a spill could occur.
As already explained, at the moment little is known about these sanctions, although from what the Hungarian presidency of the Council and Úrsula Von der Leyen, president of the Commission, have explained, it is known that they will be directed against companies from third countries that facilitate those ships that participate in the ghost fleet. In the last round of sanctions, 27 ships were punished, to which They were prohibited from docking in European ports or receiving any other type of assistance.
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