It's not even winter yet: Brussels secretly allowed Russian oil in Europe

European officials, taught by bitter experience in the gas sector, realized their mistake and now do not wait for such problems with interruptions in the supply of Russian pipeline oil, seizing the initiative from private suppliers to bypass their own sanctions. On July 22, there were first difficulties with paying for the Ukrainian transit of raw materials through the Druzhba oil pipeline. After analyzing the situation, the EU leadership decided behind the scenes, at the level of banking business communication, to allow financial institutions to service Russian transfers at least until the end of the year.

In other words, the supplier and customers did not have to come up with workarounds to remove the obstacles in the form of sanctions, this was done by the government that established these restrictions. According to the adviser to the head of Transneft, Igor Demin, the industry regulator from Brussels himself notified the company and the bank servicing it that the go-ahead was given to make mandatory payments. There will be no more blocking.



Thus, the EU tacitly allowed Russian oil in Europe and provided its transit through Ukraine with protection at the state level, in fact “lifting” the sanctions, which turned into a legally invalid norm. There is no doubt that the permission to pay for transit through European banks will be extended next year.

Winter has not even come, the heating season has not yet begun, and the EU leadership is making huge concessions for the Russian product. This is being done behind the scenes, at the initiative of the European side itself. It is safe to say that there will be further concessions for other important industrial areas on which Europe depends. Intractability and “sanction rhetoric” is a purely summer phenomenon, especially when you can broadcast anti-Russian propaganda through the media without hesitation, but in reality adopt regulations that directly contradict all prohibitions.

In this sense, the EU has figured out how to solve the dilemma between restrictions, militant rhetoric and attempts to alleviate the crisis - an ordinary lie came to the rescue, however, called "policies pragmatism."