Minority staff for the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs published an analysis arguing that the Trump Administration has largely stopped regular Russia sanctions designations during the fourth year of Russia’s full-scale war on Ukraine, leaving a broad set of alleged sanctions evaders and enablers undesignated while allies continued to add targets. The analysis compares at least 32 sanctions rollouts per year by the Departments of the Treasury and State during the first three years of the war with one rollout over the entire fourth year, which it says likely meant forgoing more than 1,000 designations. It points to the October 2025 designations of Rosneft and Lukoil, which it says were delayed by eight months and have been easy to evade without follow-on counter-circumvention action, and it cites a hearing response from Treasury Secretary Bessent that the Rosneft and Lukoil rollout was sufficient. It then lists potential targets across procurement networks, payments and finance, revenue generation, and human rights abuses, including more than 130 companies in mainland China and Hong Kong advertising immediate sales of restricted chips to Russia, transshipment and supply routes for drones and dual-use goods through third countries, the purported A7 sanctions-evasion mechanism described as moving tens of billions per month and accounting for nearly 19 percent of Russian foreign trade operations, financial institutions facilitating evasion including banks connected to the Central Bank of Russia’s SPFS messaging system, actors enabling Arctic LNG 2 shipments, smuggling of at least USD 90 billion in Russian oil including entities such as Redwood Global Supply, and shadow fleet vessels and associated service providers.

Original source View in tracker