The EU and the US have imposed a string of sanctions on Russia in the wake of the Ukraine-Russia war, which has ben raging for nearly six months now. While these measures are truly painful for the bloc, the US suffers no serious harm. To the contrary, it even benefits from the sanctions. Moreover, whenever US interests are a top priority, Washington finds nothing shameful about doing business with the denounced aggressor, Vladimir Putin.

Led by the United States, the Western world has decided on a series of sanctions packages in recent months, even though US President Joe Biden has repeatedly acknowledged that they will not deter Russian President Vladimir Putin from war.

„Marcus” of Germany’s Der Spiegel: „[T]here are widespread concerns in Europe that a figure like [Trump] maybe even…himself might get elected president again. So, are there any steps…you’re trying to do her…to prevent…becoming undone two years from now?” pic.twitter.com/lyixxPUyqv

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) March 24, 2022

Measures have been put in place to seize the real estates and other properties of hundreds of Russian oligarchs abroad. Their banks accounts were frozen and the West has blacklisted a number of Russian banks and state-owned companies. In addition, the US – using the European Union as a shield in the battle – has also forced the West to ban Russian crude oil and coal imports, and is pushing for a ban on natural gas. There was no doubt that President Biden would continue to force the issue of imposing an embargo until its acceptance, allowing the US to doubly benefit from the boycott: the country needs no coal or oil imported from Russia, while energy imports are vital to the EU. Without Russian imports, the EU is forced to buy LNG, i. e. liquefied natural gas, which is a more expensive, more complicated, slower and more polluting form of import, but the US happens to be a major LNG producer and has already announced a significant boost to deliveries to Europe.

This week @potus and I opened a new chapter in 🇪🇺🇺🇸 energy cooperation.

The US will deliver additional volumes of LNG, to help Europe phase out its dependency on Russian fossil fuels.

And more will follow.

We will also work together for the clean energy transition. Recap ↓ pic.twitter.com/68Qgkaf8gu

— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) March 27, 2022

However, there is one particular energy carrier that the United States desperately needs and, as such, it was „omitted” from the sanctions list. It would be an understatement to claim that Russia is critical to the world’s nuclear energy. In many ways, Russia is the nuclear industry. Close to 40 per cent of the world’s uranium enrichment infrastructure is controlled by the Kremlin. Dozens of power plants rely solely on Russian fuel. Moreover, Rosatom also provides a huge amount of global investment in the nuclear industry, energyandcapital.com points out.

The US is no exception, as it buys uranium, in one way or another, from Russian sources to operate its nuclear power plants. The author of the online article highlights that Joe Biden fails to add uranium to the sanctions list, as he would have to scrap his long-term climate goals. However, the president notorious for his gaffes and empty promises, cannot afford to break yet another of his pledges. Thus, the United States continues to pump money into the machinery it considers dangerous, aggressive and inhumane, namely Russia.

Although the West did not spare the oligarchs, there is one billionaire who remains untouched by Western sanctions. His name is Vladimir Potanin, now the second wealthiest Russian, who has only been placed on a Canadian and a British sanctions list so far. Mr Potanin has been, specifically, loyal to Vladimir Putin since the very beginning of the Putin era in the early 2000s, Vladimir Milov, an opposition Russian politician and economist in exile, told Forbes. Nornickel’s CEO has not criticised the Russian president for the war in Ukraine either.

The question of why the West imposed no sanctions on Mr Potanin, a known Russian oligarch, while it decided to sanction many other “businessmen” at the outburst of the Ukraine was appears legitimate. It seems that imposing punitive measures against Mr Potanin would be rather painful for the West.

Mr Potanin’s company, Nornickel – the world’s largest producer of refined nickel and palladium – continues to produce these metals everywhere, especially in Europe. Nornickel accounted for a significant proportion of Europe’s nickel imports last year, natural resources consultancy Wood Mackenzie points out. Nornickel’s battery material plant in Finland, built in partnership with German chemical giant BASF, is considered a potential pillar of the EU’s green agenda.

The company is also an integral player in the global palladium market, producing a third of the world’s palladium, a rare metal used in semiconductors and cars. „If Nornickel were to be hit by sanctions, it would lead to a disruption in demand, because it is very difficult to replace lost units, and Europe is the most at risk,” says Nikhil Shah, head of Nickel Research at business intelligence firm CRU Group.

Mr Shah added that

although the US relies more on Canada than Russia for nickel imports, if the US or the EU were to impose sanctions, it would drive up the prices everywhere.

Some other aspects of the sanctions also happen to reflect US interests. During the latest phase of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, there was a decision to open up the supply routes to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, previously blocked by Lithuania, just when grain shipments from Ukraine resumed from the port of Odessa.

The agreement was mutually beneficial for both sides, but the grain shipments were not only interesting from a humanitarian and supply security aspect. Large US agricultural companies (Big Agro) own significant tracts of farmland in Ukraine and, according to some, they are developing GMO products.

US Big Agro companies have been eyeing Ukraine’s arable land since the fall of the Soviet Union, but they only began to significantly expanding their sphere of influence in the Eastern European country since 2014. Despite the fact that selling farmland was prohibited in the country until 2021, the ownership structure of the land has been changing since 2014. The press reported a plan as early as 2012 about leasing unused land owned by the government to high-volume agricultural investors. The plan would have offered long-term lease on areas over 400 thousand hectares for a minimum price of 200 million dollars, with various state benefits in return.

Although the plan never got off the ground, foreign investors have obtained significant areas of farmland in the following years. Despite the moratorium land sales, ten international companies possessed huge tracts of farmland in Ukraine by 2016. A report by Open Democracy also reveals that a significant portion of Ukraine’s agricultural market is controlled by ten private companies.

Resuming grain shipments from Ukraine was therefore also in the interest of the US (the Big Agro-corporations), which lends to a

strong suspicion that ultimately, there is an underlying US-Russia agreement. This also appears to corroborate the idea that whenever it’s in Washington’s interest, they won’t shy away from doing business even with Vladimir Putin, whom they have denounced as an aggressor.