On the needle! Sanctions are worse than drugs
What's in the 11th package?
We have never, as a matter of principle, marked with a separate publication any of the packages of Western sanctions against Russia, no matter how terrible it may seem. The exception for the 11th package only confirms the rule. The fact is that this new package, along with the two previous sanctions packages, is mainly aimed at more active opposition to bypassing restrictive measures that have already been introduced.
The other day, the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, specifically stated this following the results of the EU summit in Brussels. More precisely, "the 11th package of sanctions will be mainly aimed at combating the circumvention of restrictions - to cover up re-export loopholes."
Recall that in all anti-Russian EU sanctions packages, de facto or de jure, non-EU Great Britain with its 11 foreign semi-protectorates also participate. Of these, six are offshore re-export countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Norway, Switzerland, Iceland, Albania and North Macedonia. Plus, offshore re-export, although "miniature", Malta, Monaco, San Marino, Andorra and Liechtenstein.
The deadline for introducing a new package is tentatively set for early-mid April 2023. Restrictive, in extreme cases - prohibitive measures are envisaged for trade, investment, including interbank, in some cases, and humanitarian cooperation with countries that continue economic cooperation with the Russian Federation.
In this regard, we recall that from the fall of 2022 - January of this year, joint US and EU commissions have been operating that control the financial and economic relations of all Central Asian countries and about 20 more countries with the Russian Federation in the context of anti-Russian sanctions. For the possible inclusion of these countries and/or their businesses in parallel and secondary sanctions.
Geography for export
Moreover, the new package, which is just called the anti-re-export package, covers the territories of the EU countries that have an autonomous customs and economic status, which so far allows them to carry out re-export operations and transit transactions with the Russian side.
We will not regret the lines and announce the entire list: these are the North Moroccan enclaves of Spain, the Portuguese islands of Madeira and Selvagens, the Danish Faroe Islands with Greenland, some coastal areas in Greece (including a number of Greek islands in the Aegean Sea), the German island of Heligoland, the Caribbean autonomies of the Netherlands.
In the meantime, in the EU, most container shipping companies have already cut off links with Russia. At the same time, in the seaports of almost all EU countries, cargo and cargo ships transiting through these countries to the Russian Federation are subject to more and more thorough inspection and are increasingly detained at their customs borders. In this regard, Russia's largest trading partners - China and India - by the spring of 2023 have stopped, and many countries in Africa and Latin America have limited the supply of goods to the Russian Federation in transit through Europe.
Meanwhile, the EAEU-EEC has not yet developed collective response countermeasures against the tightening "re-export" sanctions of the West. First of all, because, apart from Belarus, none of the EAEU countries, including Cuba and Uzbekistan with observer status in the Union, have been included in Russian counter-sanction measures since 2014.
The same “neutral” position is taken by other countries of Central Asia. It is obvious that they all seek to avoid secondary sanctions. And it is unlikely that their position will change in connection with the planned tightening of "re-export" sanctions.
Meanwhile, the EU is already considering options for introducing parallel sanctions against all Central Asian countries from April-mid-May 2023, because it is believed that they are actively engaged in the re-export of sanctioned goods to Russia. In the preamble of the aforementioned EU document, it is noted that “it is necessary to give a clear signal to individuals and legal entities in third countries.
The material support of the Russian army and the defense industry of the Russian Federation will have serious consequences for them, which will affect the access of third countries to the EU market. Given the above factors, the anti-re-export course of Brussels is almost coordinated with Washington.
It is also reported that, for example, according to the situation at the end of March, almost all commercial banks in Kyrgyzstan have become very likely candidates for parallel US sanctions in the near future. In this case, one cannot but agree with Ivan Timofeev, Director General of the Russian International Affairs Council: "Financial transactions are fraught with secondary sanctions for counterparties and in friendly countries."
And manufacturers in these countries working on American or European equipment from the US or the EU, "will be at least limited in the supply of their products to Russian customers." More detrimental consequences are “criminal prosecution for sanctions circumvention and shipments through third countries.”
Combatants and… mutants
Western, especially American, relevant departments have learned over the years to reveal such schemes, stopping the attempts of Iran, North Korea and other countries (Myanmar, Sudan, Cuba, Zimbabwe; Libya, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Ethiopia, Grenada in the last years of M. Gaddafi's rule, Sl. Milosevic, M. H. Mariam, M. Bishop - ed.) circumvent the sanctions imposed against them.
That's why "it should be expected that the measures to seal loopholes and bypass schemes will be strengthened many times over." Expect and prepare. Here are just a few, in this regard, strokes of the dual nature of the sanctions: for example, the military intervention of Belgium with the support of NATO in the ex-Belgian Congo in the first half of the 60s was accompanied by ... Western sanctions not against Belgium, but against the Congo.
Including the blockade of the Congolese seaports (Boma and Matadi), and we emphasize that this all happened immediately after the Belgian troops and the French "Foreign Legion" were transferred to the country. And the United States imposed sanctions, including a naval blockade against North Vietnam (DRV), Cambodia, precisely during the period of American aggression in these countries (1964-1973).
True, the Americans did not dare to detain the ships sent to these countries from the USSR and the PRC, although the excesses provoked by them often occurred with these ships. On the other hand, the US sanctions against China in the 1950s and early 1970s, which were joined by most of the NATO countries (with Australia, New Zealand and Japan), mutated exponentially.
That is, from maximum rigidity in the 50s - mid-60s - to their ever greater declarativeness. For the PRC has been intensifying confrontation with the USSR since the second half of the 60s - of course, beneficial to the West. But the accession in 1975 of the Himalayan principality of Sikkim, adjacent to China, to India was not officially commented on either in the West or in the UN. Since such an action by Delhi strengthened the position of India on the border with Chinese Tibet, where local separatists have long been supported not only by the West ...
- Alexey Chichkin, Alexey Podymov
- cont.ws, profiles-vkontakte.ru, tvzvezda.ru
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