President Biden travels to Brussels Wednesday for a meeting with NATO leaders. The U.S. president is expected to announce more sanctions Thursday after meeting with EU, NATO and G7 leaders. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Tuesday that Biden’s announcement will introduce a “new phase” in efforts to isolate Russia.
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According to the Washington Post, Sullivan said that the new sanctions “will include ‘a joint effort to crack down on evasion — on sanction-busting, on any attempt by any country to help Russia basically undermine, weaken or get around the sanctions.'”
Germany has resisted a ban on fossil fuel imports from Russia, claiming that such a move would lead to an economic crisis in western Europe. Chancellor Olaf Scholz said, “To do that from one day to the next would mean plunging our country and the whole of Europe into a recession. Hundreds of thousands of jobs would be at risk. Entire branches of industry are on the brink. Sanctions must not hit European states harder than Russian leadership.”
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Russia has reduced the capacity on a 1.4 million barrel per day oil pipeline, citing storm damage that could take up to two months to repair. The Caspian Pipeline Consortium’s capacity could be reduced by 1 million barrels a day until the repairs are completed. The pipeline transports crude oil from the Tengiz field in Kazakhstan to the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk.
The following map from Chevron shows a planned expansion from 2015 that increased capacity by 670,000 barrels a day. Both Chevron and Exxon Mobil use the pipeline. According to a report in the Financial Times, the Caspian Pipeline was exempted from a ban on Russian oil imports into the United States, provided that the oil flowing through the pipeline was “certified as coming from Kazakhstan.”
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Russian forces made no major advances on Tuesday, according to the Institute for the Study of War’s daily update. Russia is “likely moving to a phase of protracted bombardment of Ukrainian cities due to the failure of Russia’s initial campaign to encircle and seize Kyiv and other major cities.”
The report also cites “successful localized counterattacks” by Ukrainian forces, including repelling new Russian assaults in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. The bad news: “Russian forces continue to make slow but steady progress reducing the Mariupol pocket.”
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Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his now-regular overnight address that Ukrainian forces had beaten Russian forces around the southern city of Kherson, causing the Russian troops to withdraw. Zelensky also said that Russian shelling of Mariupol has virtually destroyed the city.
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Sanctions are giving Russian corporations difficulty in making coupon payments on corporate debt, according to a Reuters report. Companies tied to Russian oligarchs who have been sanctioned may have trouble completing transactions to make their payments. The report cited data from J.P. Morgan that “Russian corporates have nearly $100 billion of hard currency bonds outstanding, more than twice the $40 billion the Russian sovereign owes on international bond markets.” More than half the corporate issues were executed by state-run firms and most of that went to fossil fuel companies.
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Dmitri Peskov said Tuesday that Russia would not take nuclear weapons off the table in Ukraine. The Russian spokesman told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour last night nukes would only be used if Russia faced an “existential threat.” A U.S. spokesman called the comment “reckless.”
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