West is ‘missing obscure sanctions that could set back Russia’s war machine’

A US group has identified several obscure but potentially key sanctions it says could seriously disrupt Russia’s war effort in Ukraine after last month’s targeting of the Kremlin’s biggest oil firms. Previous rounds of sanctions have been applied to Russian energy companies, banks, military suppliers and the “shadow fleet” of ships carrying Russian oil. But Dekleptocracy, a civil society group that researches Russia’s war economy, says chemicals used to make mechanical lubricants and military-grade tyres are a vulnerability that US, UK and EU policymakers could exploit. Kristofer Harrison, the group’s president and a former State Department expert on Russia, described the targets as “weedy and specific”, unlike the microchips and oil companies that generally draw the attention of governments and agencies. But they are hard to replace and essential to Moscow’s ability to field tanks and fight. Dekleptocracy says. “A lubricant shortage would seriously damage Russia’s war machine,” it wrote in its latest report. Only a handful of companies worldwide make chemical additives for mechanical lubricants – motor oil for tanks and cars. Almost all of them stopped selling the chemicals to Russia at the start of its full-scale invasion, leading to widespread shortages and complaints from motorists. Dekleptocracy found that one Chinese company, Xinxiang Richful, now satisfies a large part of Russia’s demand, supplying up to eight million kilograms a year. Richful recently set up an office in Virginia. Blocking it, as well as a few smaller suppliers, would create a mechanical lubricant shortage in Russia, the group says. Xinxiang Richful did not respond to a request for comment. DeKleptocracy also found that Russia has little domestic capability to make vulcanisation accelerants and other substances needed to produce military-grade tyres. The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said at a G7 meeting last week that most major sanction options had been acted upon. “Well, there’s not a lot left to sanction from our part, I mean, we hit their major oil companies, which is what everybody’s been asking for,” he said. Tom Keatinge, the director of the finance and security centre at the Royal United Services Institute, the UK’s leading defence thinktank, said Dekleptocracy’s findings were valuable work and proof that sanctions targets remain. “For so long as Russia is successfully procuring the components it needs for its military, and for so long as Russia is successfully selling its oil, the environment remains target-rich,” he said. Russia has a strong oil industry, but it lacks domestic producers of many lesser-known but important chemicals, including food additives and substances used to make tyres, pharmaceuticals and shampoo. Moscow started an initiative earlier this year to produce hundreds of chemicals domestically – further evidence that the sector is a weakness, Dekeleptocracy says. “We looked at the Russian economy, some of the things that they absolutely need to keep their war machine running,” said Harrison. “We looked at their manufacturing base, their chemical base, to find critical issues, the things that the Russians cannot manufacture themselves.” Rubio’s remarks came after the US imposed sanctions on the Russian oil producers Rosneft and Lukoil in October in an effort to “degrade” Russia’s war machine. Keatinge said it was too early to decide whether the sanctions against Rosneft and Lukoil had been effective, because little had been done to enforce secondary sanctions against companies that continued to buy their oil. “A successful sanctions regime relies not only on identifying new targets, but also ensuring implementation against already identified targets,” he said. “Ukraine’s allies need to follow through on implementing existing sanctions and taking action against those that facilitate evasion.” Dekleptocracy was involved in previous efforts to impose sanctions on the Arctic LNG 2 gas terminal. It worked with the Biden administration to identify elements of the project – such as specific ice-class tankers – essential to its operation and vulnerable to US pressure. “I think they did an incredible job of demonstrating potential weakness that could at least be disruptive,” said Cara Abercrombie, formerly a US assistant defence secretary under Joe Biden. “Maybe not permanently damaging, but certainly disruptive.” Dekleptocracy is part of a larger civil society effort – which includes Ukrainian groups such as Razom We Stand and B4Ukraine, and the Center for Advanced Defense Studies in the US – to trawl through vast amounts of trade data to find weaknesses in Russia’s war economy and pinpoint sanctions targets for governments. Keatinge said the groups often find targets that policymakers miss. “It’s very valuable work. It regularly surfaces anomalies that need to be addressed,” he said.