The Sanctioned Middleman Has Named His Price

October's diesel purchase needed a middleman, and the middleman was already on the sanctions list. The Russian Direct Investment Fund, a state fund under US sanctions, facilitated the October diesel shipments, and it has now named its toll for the next transaction: its own removal from the list. Treasury is processing the application; the president is weighing it ^[1]. His customer has spent the fall saying Russia's elite want to do business ^[2]. The fund chairman's language is blunter.

sanctions are, in principle, philosophically wrong. — Kirill Nagiev

Ideological warmongering Biden-think is being rejected as destructive and inefficient. — Kirill Nagiev

The relief began small and reversible. On April 15, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the US would not renew sanctions exemptions for Russian and Iranian oil; two days later the department issued a 30-day emergency waiver — a general license, meaning a temporary permission to keep doing what the sanctions otherwise barred — covering the seven-week Iran conflict and the near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz ^[3]. Oil prices fell sharply that May on ceasefire hopes ^[4]. The emergency behind the waiver was real.

We're approaching unheard of inventory levels. — Neil Chapman

By September the sequence had inverted. The administration's position had been that business deals would follow a formal settlement; it began offering them to Russia before any ceasefire existed, Trump describing the Russian elite as people who wanted to do business and Kushner saying the rest of the deal was already arranged if Ukraine withdrew to Putin's line ^[2]. The toll is the smallest of the claims. In October the president's envoys discussed an American investor taking over the undamaged Nord Stream segment with possible US control of Nord Stream 2, oil deals involving Lukoil's global assets, and a joint fertilizer venture in Belarus after a potash delivery — each gesture of sanctions relief paired with an American equity claim ^[5]. Congress had already voted on this class of transaction: in August the Senate passed the Graham Act 86 to 11, imposing steep tariffs on Russian exports and barring new American investment in Russian sovereign debt and Kremlin-controlled securities ^[6]. An October executive order waived the act's tariffs and penalties, leaving Congress's wall standing on paper while the administration negotiates the very stakes the legislation was written to forbid ^[1]. The House companion still awaits a vote, and lawmakers have opened investigations into the diesel deal ^[7]. The same Treasury published draft rules on October 26 extending outbound-investment limits to China and Russia ^[8]. Not everyone will accept the conversion. The European Commission rejected Washington's plan for Europe to resume large-volume Russian gas purchases, saying the EU will lift no sanctions until the war is completely over ^[9]. Europe's own law points the other way: a phased ban on all Russian pipeline and LNG imports takes full effect January 1, 2028 ^[10]. And Kyiv's read of the ledger is that easing on Russian oil keeps the war funded ^[1]. Read the year back as an audit. One column holds lifespans: thirty days, the length of April's waiver ^[3]; January 2028, the date Europe's gas ban takes full effect ^[10]. The other column holds claims with no expiry: a delisting, a pipeline under possible American control, Lukoil's global assets, a fertilizer venture ^[1][5]. The October order waived the act's tariffs and penalties, and the claims in the second column carry no expiry date ^[1]. The honest limit is plain: Treasury is processing, the president is weighing, the pipeline remains a could. Proposals, not yet contracts ^[5]. Trump has put his own frame on it.

I am in the process of negotiating Peace in the war between Russia and Ukraine, and don't want to do anything that will drive, foolishly, Russia away from the bargaining table. — Donald Trump