Until now, the world’s two most populous nations, India and China, have largely resisted the American leader’s pleas that they stop buying Russian oil – and his threats of what might happen if they don’t.
But early signs of adherence to Trump’s “tremendous” sanctions may just be a holding pattern, analysts say, as players figure out new ways to deliver and acquire cheap Russian black gold via a sophisticated workaround system that involves middlemen and a “shadow fleet” of tankers with opaque ownership.
