European Union Grants Sanctions Reprieves That Keep Russian Gas and Metals Flowing

TotalEnergies may keep selling liquefied natural gas from its Siberian Yamal project to Asia, while Brussels hesitates to sanction an Irish plant accused of supplying Russia's war economy.

The European Union's sanctions on Russia conflict with the bloc's own economic dependencies. TotalEnergies, the French energy company, can continue selling liquefied natural gas from its Yamal project in Siberia to Asian buyers, benefiting from a reprieve in the latest measures, the Financial Times reported.

At the same time, Brussels is hesitating to target an Irish plant accused of supplying Russia's war industry, because officials fear that restricting alumina exports to Russia would threaten the bloc's own aluminium supply chain, according to a separate Financial Times report. In both cases the goal of pressuring Moscow conflicts with the practical cost to European companies and consumers.

The exemptions illustrate a broader difficulty. Sanctions regimes are only as strong as the willingness to absorb their domestic cost, and as the Ukraine war continues, the exceptions granted to protect European industry accumulate, reducing the intended pressure.

Veracity: Corroborated

78/100

If true, who benefits: The carve-outs benefit TotalEnergies, Asian gas buyers, and European aluminium users, and Russia, which keeps revenue and supply moving.
The nuance: Reporting attributes key exemptions to Greek and Irish pressure rather than a single French waiver, and "reduced pressure" is an inference, not a measured result.

An open-source-intelligence read of how likely this story is true with its real nuance, not a judgment of any outlet. It assesses the claim, weighing independent and adversarial reporting. How we label confidence.

What this means

Each exemption keeps a channel of Russian revenue or European supply open, which means the sanctions architecture is weakening at the margins even as it expands in formal terms, and the beneficiaries are the specific firms and Asian buyers on either side of the carve-out. The exposure is to anyone assuming sanctions steadily tighten Russia's finances, because the real trajectory is a negotiated balance between pressure and self-harm. For commodity markets, the practical result is that Russian gas and metals keep reaching buyers, capping the price disruption that a fully enforced regime would create.

European Union Grants Sanctions Reprieves That Keep Russian Gas and Metals Flowing

Townsquare

Comments