While there was some reduction in the number of violations of the European Union’s embargo on Russian crude oil imports from January to March, the trend reversed in April, when the number of violations began increasing in May.
The export of Russian crude oil from Black Sea ports increased to 4.97 million tons last month, the CFTS portal reports, citing data from the Black Sea News publication.
Moreover, according to the publication, this increase was because of exports to EU countries. In addition, according to the publication, tankers carrying Russian crude oil have even resumed voyages from Black Sea ports directly to EU ports.
The Greek tanker Euronike left Novorossiysk port and arrived in the Spanish port of Bilbao in May, delivering 160,000 tons of Russian crude oil.
The Greek tanker Searunner also delivered over 100,000 tons of Russian crude oil from the port of Taman to the port of Rotterdam (Netherlands).
In addition, 11 tankers carrying Russian crude oil arrived for ship-to-ship transfers off the coast of Greece at once last month. And the total volume of oil transported in violation of the embargo was 1.5 million tons, which is almost twice as much as in April.
"Why is this so? Because the European Commission itself has no mandate to enforce sanctions, and the national governments of EU countries did not need to enforce the sanctions in such volumes. That is, they (the Europeans) are now rediscovering the same country in all its glory (even we could not believe it at first): it behaves in accordance with criminal concepts if it is unchecked," said Andrii Klymenko, the head of the Monitoring Group at the Black Sea Strategic Studies Institute.
As reported earlier, the volume of transshipment of export coal in Russian ports increased by 18.3% in January-April 2023, compared with the corresponding period of 2022. The highest volumes of transshipment of export coal since the imposition of an embargo on the import of Russian coal into the European Union in August 2022 were recorded in March and April.
