As the US waives its ban on India buying Putin’s oil for 30 days, Europe must bolster its own measures, such as stopping the flow of luxury cars
Donald Trump handed Vladimir Putin a financial lifeline last week when he waived a ban on India buying Russian oil for 30 days.
Trump found himself in a furious row last year with Narendra Modi over his country’s oil deals with Moscow, only for fences to be partly mended when India’s biggest importer later capitulated.
Now we find the power of oil as an instrument of geopolitical power is again to the fore. It suits the US president to ease up on sanctions against Russian oil purchases to keep the global oil price down.
Trump knows that high prices at the pump could send his popularity to fresh lows and believes that allowing more Russian oil into the global system will limit the extent of an Iran-induced petrol price spike.
