This morning, in a blaze of publicity, Royal Navy commandos boarded a sanctioned oil tanker in the English channel in a move that No. 10 heralded as a blow against Vladimir Putin’s war machine. It’s good, of course, that for the first time in the war the British government has followed the example of the French and finally taken action. However, the boarding of the 107,000 ton Smyrtos has much more to do with political theatre than with actually strangling Russia’s economy.
The boarding of the Smyrtos has much more to do with political theatre than with strangling Russia’s economy
Though you’d never know it from statements from No.10 or Labour ministers, transporting and selling Russian oil is not in itself illegal. Russian oil destined for EU and UK ports is subject to a price cap of $44.10 per barrel, well below the current (discounted) price for Urals crude of between $71 and $83, depending on prices in local markets. But the Smytros’s cargo of 740,000 barrels was bound from the Baltic Russian port of Ust-Luga to Sikka in India – which, crucially, is outside the Price Cap Coalition of mostly Western countries. Enforcing western sanctions on non-Western countries is a political not a legal battle which so far the US and the EU have declined to fight.
