In significant parallel actions this week, the EU and US imposed new sanctions on Russia. While the EU’s 19th sanctions package is much broader in scope, the measures overlap in their focus on the Russian energy sector, with the US imposing full blocking sanctions on Russia’s two largest oil majors, OJSC Rosneft Oil Company (“Rosneft”) and Lukoil OAO (“Lukoil”) and the EU imposing a full ban on Russia-origin liquified natural gas (“LNG”), among other energy sector…
On 13 October 2025, the Office of Trade Sanctions Implementation (“OTSI”) published a blog post highlighting a recent case involving suspected breach reports from a UK branch of a multinational bank, under the Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019. OTSI’s blog post notes that the UK branch of the bank identified payments linked to the trade of sanctioned goods from Russia to a third country, between April and June 2025. The blog post notes that…
Following the EU’s 18th sanctions package and the latest developments of the UK’s sanctions against Russia, the Governments of Australia and Japan also introduced additional measures against Russia respectively on 18 and 12 September 2025. Among other measures, they have agreed with other G7 countries to phase out Russian oil imports in response to the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, indicating aligned efforts within the G7 with respect to the imposition of sanctions against Russia. This…
On 18 July 2025, the UK Government announced a lowering of the Oil Price Cap (“OPC”) to further inhibit Russia’s ability to use oil revenues to finance its illegal invasion of Ukraine. The OPC was first introduced in December 2022 to reduce Russia’s oil revenues in response to the invasion of Ukraine that same year. The OPC prevents G7 companies from shipping, insuring or servicing any Russian crude oil sold above the OPC price of…