You know the war is going bad when they are easing sanctions on Russia.

by

The Axial Post
@TheAxialPost
The Russian Oil Concession to India

The Move:
US issued 30-day temporary waiver allowing stranded Russian oil cargoes to be sold to India .

The Context:
– India holds crude reserves covering ~25 days of demand
– Imports 40% of oil from Middle East via Strait of Hormuz
– Iranian strikes disrupted Gulf shipping—150+ vessels stranded

The Numbers:
– Indian state refiners (IOC, BPCL, HPCL, MRPL) already bought ~20M barrels from traders
– Russian Urals now trading at $4–$5/bbl premium to Brent (vs. $13 discount in February)
-Brent briefly surpassed $84/bbl—highest since mid-2024

The Reversal:
This marks a sharp U-turn. In January, India cut Russian purchases under US pressure to avoid 25% tariffs and secure trade deal . Now Washington is encouraging Russian flows to prevent supply collapse.

The Logic:
“India refiners are back in the market…more than prices, availability of molecules is the issue” . Price sensitivity took a backseat to physical supply.

Bottom line:
Pragmatism won. The US just temporarily unbanned Russian oil to keep India afloat while Iran burns. War makes strange bedfellows.

The U.S. Treasury granted a general license allowing transactions with Rosneft’s German subsidiary with no expiration date, creating a long-term carve-out for a major Russian energy asset.

https://energynews.oedigital.com/oil-refineries/2026/03/05/us-allows-rosneft-german-transactions-despite-russia-sanctions

https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/US-Gives-Rosnefts-German-Refinery-Network-Open-Ended-Sanctions-Exemption.html

Shanaka Anslem Perera ⚡
@shanaka86
BREAKING: Russia has been trying to crack US sanctions for four years. Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz for six days and did it for them.

Read the Bessent tweet carefully. The US Treasury just issued a formal waiver allowing Indian refiners to purchase Russian oil. Thirty days. OFAC-authorized. Explicitly designed to keep oil flowing to global markets while Iran holds the Gulf hostage. The announcement frames this as a geopolitical favor to India, a tactical measure that will not “significantly benefit” Russia, a short-term stopgap until New Delhi ramps up American crude purchases.

Every one of those framings is technically defensible. None of them changes what actually happened.

Here is the prior state of play. Between 2022 and 2025, the United States constructed the most elaborate secondary sanctions architecture in the history of oil markets specifically to deny Russia energy revenues from the Ukraine war. India became the primary battleground of that architecture. Russia supplied approximately 2 to 3 percent of India’s oil before the Ukraine invasion. By 2024, Russian oil had climbed to 42 percent of India’s total purchases. The US response was to impose 50 percent tariffs on Indian imports in August 2025. Russian crude imports to India hit a two-year low in December 2025. The sanctions pressure was working. The architecture was holding.

Then Iran launched Operation Epic Fury’s counter, closed Hormuz, struck Qatar’s LNG facilities, hit Ras Tanura, and left the global oil market twelve days from a supply crisis. The Strait carries roughly 20 percent of global petroleum. Qatar supplies 12 percent of Europe’s gas. The tanker transit collapse is running at 80 to 90 percent. The market needs crude. The crude that is available and sitting in tankers right now, already paid for, already at sea, is Russian.

So the United States Treasury issued a waiver. Thirty days. Expires April 4.

The sanctions architecture that took three years and a trade war with India to construct was suspended in a single tweet because Iran made alternative arrangements unworkable. This is the deepest structural consequence of the Hormuz closure that no energy analyst has yet named: the Iran war has not merely disrupted global oil supply. It has demonstrated that the US secondary sanctions regime is a fair-weather instrument that breaks at the first genuine supply emergency.

The precedent is the problem. Every country watching this waiver understands what it means. When American secondary sanctions produce pain for American allies during American wars, the sanctions get waived. That is now documented policy. The thirty-day clock on this waiver is not the relevant timeline. The relevant timeline is how long it takes Moscow to calculate what the documentation of this precedent is worth to its future sanctions exposure.

Iran closed a strait. Russia got sanctions relief. The United States called it a stopgap.

This is what it looks like when energy architecture fails the first real stress test it has ever faced.

https://open.substack.com/pub/shanakaanslemperera/p/the-invisible-siege-how-insurance?r=6p7b5o&utm_medium=ios