The Russian Oil Sanctions Farce Continues (1/2)

How Europe’s toothless price cap props up Putin’s war machine

How many times must we circle this absurd roundabout? Another week, another EU sanctions package, another missed opportunity to actually pull the plug on Russia’s war machine. The sheer repetition would be comic if it weren’t so damned infuriating. Why are we still tiptoeing around the obvious solution, like bureaucrats paralysed by their own paperwork? If you sense my patience wearing thin, you’re right. The stupidity of it all is enough to make a grown analyst weep.

Let’s open the bonnet on this latest sanctions announcement and see just how far we are from flicking the only switch that matters.

Judge for yourself whether Europe is steering the ship — or just rearranging deckchairs on the sub.

The Illusion of Action: “Kayfabe Sanctions”

Europe’s 18th (proposed) sanctions package against Russia, announced this week, reads like a bureaucrat’s checklist: lower the oil price cap to $45, ban Nord Stream pipelines, blacklist 77 shadow fleet tankers. The European Commission calls this “turning up the pressure”. But it’s simply not. On any analysis, it’s more like a WWE wrestler selling doing an injury to another. In WWE, they call this…