Putin’s Shadow Fleet

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Putin’s Shadow Fleet

The West’s blunt new economic policy, designed to starve the Russian petrostate of its lifeblood, could be the end of the global oil market as we know it. The battle of wills is just beginning.

JULIA IOFFE

On Monday, after months of brainstorming and weeks of internal haggling, the European Union, along with the G7 and Australia, finally snapped into place the next phase of its plan to economically kneecap Moscow: a $60 price cap on Russian oil, as well as an E.U. embargo on Russian crude. The price cap was floated earlier this summer by the Biden administration in part because sanctions, as draconian as they were, have not done nearly as much damage to the Russian economy as Western leaders had initially hoped. The Russian economy has proven remarkably resilient, as have the Russian people who, unlike their American counterparts, know there’s not much they can do politically when their economic condition worsens.

The main reason for Russia’s financial resilience, of course, was its oil and gas revenues, which before the war made up more than a third of Russia’s federal budget. Thanks to the war...

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