Russian sanctions not watertight

Moscow will likely still be able to find buyers and ships for its exports of crude and products despite the measures

Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent Western sanctions on Russian crude and products have had significant impacts on the global tanker markets. Pre-war trade flows have been disrupted, redirected or cut altogether in a worldwide reshuffling of hydrocarbon supply, while the use of sanctions-busting measures has picked up and led to a grey market that includes disguising the origin of cargoes and using tankers not aligned to key insurance clubs. And the effects continue to reverberate with the recent introduction of the G7 price cap and the EU’s import bans. The EU banned seaborne Russian crude imports on 5 December last year and a similar ban on product shipments came into force on