The Ministry of Finance is introducing sanctions against the Russian oil companies due to "Russia's lack of commitment to a peace process to put an end to the war in Ukraine", according to a statement on Wednesday.
We know that oil revenues are what contribute to financing the Russian war machine. We also know that many sanctions that have been implemented, not least against the energy sector, have had shortcomings, says Robert Bergqvist, senior economist at SEB.
The shortcomings are about the fact that several countries, despite the ongoing war, have taken the opportunity to import energy from Russia. Among these are India, China and Turkey.
Some of the countries that have bought cheap energy and oil from Russia have also exported it further and made money on it, says Robert Bergqvist.
A marking
He says that through the sanctions, it will become more difficult for the Russian companies to export oil, but that the measure is primarily a marking.
I think it's symbolic from the US side. They want to mark against the fact that nothing is happening in the peace negotiations. Trump wants negotiations about some kind of ceasefire to begin.
Assessors who Bloomberg has spoken to are moderately hopeful that the US sanctions decision will seriously affect Putin's war planning. Previous economic sanctions against Russia, introduced by the Biden administration, damaged the economy but never deterred Putin from continuing.
Lesser effect
Thomas Graham, a member of the think tank Council on Foreign Relations, tells Bloomberg that the latest sanctions may ultimately have less effect than Trump hopes.
If the White House believes that this will lead to radical changes in the Kremlin's behavior or Putin's policy, then they are deceiving themselves – and I don't think they really believe it, says Graham and adds:
Sanctions work slowly and the Kremlin has been very skilled at circumventing this type of sanction.
The sanctions decision had an immediate effect on the oil price. A barrel of Brent oil rose almost 3 percent to 64 dollars per barrel, while the American WTI equivalent rose over 3 percent to 60 dollars per barrel.
India began to import oil from Russia in connection with the outbreak of the Ukraine war and according to the analysis firm Kpler, Russia has accounted for 36 percent of all oil imports to India.
