I want to start with the question. Why
is it that Donald Trump is threatening
to impose sanctions, higher tariffs on
India in relation to what's going on in
Ukraine? Well, here's part of the answer
because actually this is kind of
interesting. It comes back to the
question of is there going to be peace
there? Um what happens next? Start with
this. Okay, so this bar is showing you
Russian exports of fossil fuels back
before the invasion of Ukraine. And you
can see, look, by far and away the most
of them went to Europe. There's a lot of
uh oil, a lot of uh gas going to Europe.
Then you've got China, then you got
other countries. Then you got Turkey,
the UK down there. So, not very many. Of
course, now sanctions have been imposed
on uh Russia by these countries saying
we're not we don't want to take your
fossil fuels. We don't want to take your
oil, don't want to take your coal, and
so on and so forth. So, what happened
next? Okay, there's a bit of this that
that will seem expected, but some of it
might be seem unexpected. Look, EU
imports from Russia, the amount of stuff
flowing from Russia to the EU went down
a lot. UK as well. So UK was this quite
small slice down there. You can see
that's basically gone down to zero. So
these countries are not getting half as
much stuff from Russia. In the UK's
case, basically nothing from Russia. But
what happened next to these other
countries? Well, have a look at this.
China, which was in second place, is now
up at the top, taking far more in terms
of oil, in terms of other fossil fuels,
mostly oil from uh Russ from Russia. But
here's the really striking thing. Okay,
look at this. India, it was down there.
It was one of the smallest recipients of
all of Russian fossil fuels. Look at
what happened after those sanctions were
imposed. Look at this Indian slice. It
goes up and becomes enormous. So you've
got massive flows in particular of oil
going from Russia through to India. And
here's the thing, that's billions of
euros that go to Vladimir Putin into the
war effort. And then all of that oil,
it's turned into products like kerosene,
like diesel and so on. And then after
this, it's exported to places like the
UK and Europe. So it's not like the
sanctions have necessarily stopped
Russia sending this stuff overseas. Uh
you can see the other countries, by the
way. It's not like it's stop stopped
Russia from sending stuff overseas. It's
changed the nature of where it's
actually going. The net amount is more
or less the same. And if you look, for
instance, breaking it down at the kinds
of things we're talking about. So that
that last chart was fossil fuels as a
whole. This is looking specifically at
oil. Who are the biggest recipients
since the sanctions were imposed? It's
China and it's India. So that's why
Donald Trump is saying, I might put
sanctions on you, secondary sanctions. I
might put tariffs up on you on India and
potentially China as well in order to
deal with the fact that this is the
biggest way of Russia getting revenue
and getting all those fossil fuels out.
Same thing for coal. So this is looking
at coal exports from Russia. It's mostly
China is mostly India. Also Turkey by
the way who are high up for all of this
taking a lot of coal uh from Russia. But
here's the thing. It's not necessarily
like Europe isn't still taking some of
this stuff. If you saw that first chart,
that's looking at fossil fuels in total.
If you look specifically at pipeline
gas, still Europe the biggest recipient.
Look to liqufied natural gas, so just
sending it over in vessels. Europe by
far and away taking most of Russian LNG
after sanctions were imposed. Of course,
there's no sanctions on this stuff
because Europe needs the gas. So it's
this kind of paradox is there are some
uh issues where it doesn't seem like
sanctions have been imposed quite as
enthusiastically as you might have
thought and it's a similar story by the
way as well when it comes to fertilizer.
So this is where Europe got its
fertilizer. So it's keeping us all fed
is where it got fertilizer from before
the invasion of Ukraine. Russia was by
far and away the biggest bar after the
invasion of Ukraine after sanctions were
imposed. Where's it get fertilizer from?
We'll move on a few years. It's still
Russia. It's still Russia. Now, this is
not to say that some of the sanctions
aren't having an impact. In particular,
one of the things that people have been
concerned about is that there's this
shadow fleet of oil tankers coming out
of Russia. And this is showing you just
how many of these shadow fleet are going
out of particular ports that gradually
have had sanctions imposed on them. And
the idea there is you're stifling it off
so that they can't even send it to India
even if they wanted to. Well, since
Donald Trump imposed, there have been
various kind of different waves of
sanctions being imposed, including by
the Biden administration. But the thing
that's really made a difference is in
the last few months, the White House has
imposed further sanctions and if you
look at the flows of these vessels out
of Russian ports, it's down to the
lowest level it's ever been. Underlining
the fact and this is kind of perhaps a
slightly awkward conclusion. If you take
that and if you take this the fact that
Donald Trump really wants to potentially
impose sanctions on India, this is a far
tougher White House in terms of the
economic measures thus far that they
have uh implemented despite the fact of
when people look at the White House,
when they look at Donald Trump, when
they look at Vladimir Putin, they might
have a different impression about what
they want.