The most effective sanctions yet on Russia’s oil exports since the start of the war in Ukraine are set to become irrelevant if Donald Trump pressures Ukraine into accepting a peace plan that might have looked quite different had they been in place earlier.

Last Friday, sanctions on two of Russia’s biggest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil, came into effect. Between them, those two companies can produce about 5.3 million barrels of oil a day, or more than half of Russia’s oil exports.

From the moment those sanctions were announced, Chinese and Indian buyers of Russian oil – by far the biggest buyers since the 2022 invasion – halted their purchases, fearful of being caught up in retaliations that could deny them access to the US dollar-denominated global financial system.

An estimated 50 tankers from Russia’s “shadow fleet”, carrying about 48 million barrels of oil, are now stranded at sea.Credit: Reuters

An estimated 50 tankers from Russia’s “shadow fleet”, carrying about 48 million barrels of oil, are now stranded at sea, unable to land their cargoes. JPMorgan has estimated about a third of Russia’s seaborne oil exports is now in tankers effectively being used as floating storage.

Depending on how prepared the US is to police those sanctions – particularly whether it is prepared to sanction Chinese refineries – and how quickly Russia can (as it has done throughout the war) reshape its supply chains to disguise the origins of its shipments (there’s been a surge in ship-to-ship transfers at sea), the sanctions could take a big bite out of Russia’s oil revenues.

If Trump gets his peace deal, we may never know if more decisive action earlier might have produced a different and, for Ukraine, better result.

With oil and gas contributing about 40 per cent of Russia’s budgeted revenues, that in turn could have a material impact on the funding of a war that has already stretched the country’s........

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