The Duran Podcast - US-EU launch sanctions war against BRICS

Episode Date: October 24, 2025

US-EU launch sanctions war against BRICS

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the new U.S. sanctions, or maybe not so new. I don't know. I was under the impression that Luke Oil and Rosneft and everything else was sanctioned, gas prom. All of it. I thought all of it was sanctioned, but I guess not. I guess I was wrong. Luke Oil and Rosneff are now going under more U.S. sanctions and their subsidiaries will fall under more U.S. sanctions. This was coordinated with the EU, in my opinion.

I see that these sanctions announcements, Bessett, Besset. in Europe. I think that they kind of coordinated the announcement of these sanctions to fall on pretty much the same day because we also got the EU 19th sanctions package announcements where they will also go after Russian oil, Russian Shadow Fleet. And they're also going to go after the EU's going to go after China as well. They're going to go after China and Chinese companies that are funding Putin's war machine. And the U.S. sanctions are tariff. targeted at India. Yeah.

And we have had some statements from India, from media, looking at the situation in India, claiming that the Indian companies that are refining the Russian oil may have to stop doing so fearing secondary sanctions. I can't confirm this, and a lot of it is coming from Bloomberg, and I've been burned by Bloomberg many, many times, reporting. about their sources. But anyway, that's the situation with the sanctions. Bessent, very, very happy. We finally got sanctions. You know what? We said the minute Trump starts putting a lot of sanctions on Russia, then it's over. This is without a doubt now. 100, 1,000 percent. This is Trump's war.

1,000 percent. Trump is with the Europeans. Trump is with the globalists. Trump is in it. He is full in Project Ukraine, there is no turning back now for President Trump. If he loses this war, then it is his L. No doubt about it. This is the single most important. The point you've just made is the single most important one. This is the crossing of a major line. Trump up to now has resisted imposing sanctions on the Russians. I have, like yourself, always assumed that Luke Oil and Rosneft were already sanctioned. I see to remember that Rosneft was actually sanctioned by the Europeans a long, long time ago. So I'm not quite sure what this is all about now. Maybe it's the Americans now are sanctioning Rosnev. But the fact that Trump is now coming out

and imposing oil sanctions like this on Russia, sanctions of any kind on Russia. He's now on the sanctions escalator, because these sanctions, as we're going to discuss, in a moment, are not going to achieve the results that he assumed, but he is now on the sanctions escalator, when you get onto the sanctions escalator, as we've discussed many times, inevitably, unavoidably, you're going to go all the way up to the top and even beyond, because there is no point at which this ever stops. If you impose sanctions which don't work, the pressure always on you is not going to be to retreat from those sanctions, but to escalate on the sanctions further still. So Russia, of course, already, I believe, the most sanctioned country on the planet.

Sanctions against Russia have been completely unsuccessful. Trump has brought into this idea that if he can sanction and stop Russian oil exports, that will force the Russians to capitulate and to accept his freeze. One of the things that Trump has been trying to do relentlessly over the last couple of months is gain leverage over the Russians. He believes that he can block Russian oil exports. He will get that leverage. We'll discuss many times.

He's wrong about this. Thomas Graham at the Council of Foreign Relations has just told him so, interestingly, but of course he won't listen. So now he's imposed these sanctions against Rosneft and Lukoyle. And to be clear, the people he is actually targeting with these sanctions is not the Russians. I mean, Rosneft and Luke Oil are not going to be affected in their operations inside Russia, that he is sanctioning or he's trying to put pressure. on the Indians. And he's doing that, as you absolutely rightly say, in coordination with the

British and with the Europeans. And you have those articles in Bloomberg and Reuters, which say that the Indian refiners are having second thoughts about buying Russian oil and that they might reduce purchases of Russian oil. And all of these, as the British and the Americans and Europeans know perfectly well, articles that appear in Reuters and Bloomberg are syndicalized in the Indian media. So they are appearing in the Indian media as well. You go to the Times of India and the Hindu, all of these, the Hindustan times and all of these places. You will find these very same articles from Reuters and Bloomberg. They're being repeated there, but you can immediately see that it is the same ones and the pressure on India to stop buying Russian oil is on.

And remember, we had that, those comments that Trump was making, that Modi over the course of a telephone call, which it seems never took place, told Trump that India would stop buying Russian oil. Apparently, there never was such a conversation, never was such an assurance. but you can see that the pressure on India is now piling up. Now just to say quickly what is going to happen because this is always the iron rule with these sanctions. Probably there will be, as one of the Indian refiners is saying, a recalibration. In other words, they will work out some new arrangements with the Russians as well, by the way.

And there will be a dip in Indian oil purchases of Russian oil, at least, to all appearances. The trade will then resume. Apparently, Indian refiners don't buy Indian oil, a Russian oil, directly from Rosneft and Luke oil anyway. They buy them through a myriad of third parties. What we're almost certainly going to see, because the oil business for India is now becoming a vital economic lifeline. What they're going to do is they're going to say, this isn't Russian oil at all, we're buying it from all sorts of other people. They'll be doing all of those things. They'll be decanting it and playing it around in the way that we always see.

And in the end, in a few weeks, months time, everything will be back to normal. They're going after India. Trump is going after India. He's attacking India. He's attacking India, yeah. The Europeans are attacking China. Last week they attacked China with an expiry and the chips. under the U.S. orders.

Yeah. So that's why I'm saying, this is a coordinated attack by the United States and their EU vassals, their UK EU vassals, right? So, and Trump is always going on about Bricks, and Bricks wants to destroy the dollar, and Bricks is dead, and no one wants to join Bricks because I place tariffs anyway. It doesn't seem like he knows much about Bricks anyway because he thinks Spain is the S in Bricks. But anyway, this is what Lindsay Graham, I guess, is telegives. So Trump's repeating it.

How come Russia, China, India, the three big parts of bricks, how come they just don't retaliate against the United States or specifically Europe? I mean, if you're looking at the playing field, you're saying, you know what, we can easily knock the EU out of this or the UK out of this. I mean, China, China can easily decimate the EU economy if they wanted to. How come they just don't? How can they just don't say, you know, we're saying, you know, we're saying. sick and tired of this. I mean, they did a little bit of it with Nexperia, right? They stopped the exports

of Nexperia's production facility in China. And within a day, the Netherlands was begging China to discuss it, right? We see problems with Volkswagen and all kinds of supply issues in the automotive industry in Germany. How come the Chinese, the Indians, and the Russians just don't sit down and just really, really tied in the screws on the weakest parts of the collective. Because Collective West, obviously, is coordinating an attack, an economic attack on three big players of bricks. I think they are tightening the screws. I think China certainly is. I mean, going back to Expedia, I mean, I think they didn't realize. And this is one of the extraordinary, baffling things, that the place where it built makes its chips now is overwhelmingly in China. Not in Europe. How could you not know that? I know, but apparently, yeah.

And the Chinese are saying they're not going to export those chips, and they're apparently furious about this. And I gather the media in China is all about this story. I mean, it's a big, big issue there. And apparently these chips are vital for the European car industry. And by the way, the American car industry. And as you absolutely rightly say, there are problems. And as we know, China has also now tightened.

regulations on exports of rare earths, and we're probably going to see that as well. And the latest word is that Xi Jinping is now apparently unwilling to meet with Trump and the summit meeting between Xi Jinping and Trump at the Apex summit is off. And Modi has just announced that he's not going to go to the ASEAN summit. and the reason he's not going to the ASEAN summit is because Trump is going to be going, and he doesn't want to meet Trump there. So I think they are starting to take countermeasures. And I think these are serious countermeasures.

Of course, the major player here is China. I mean, the Russians, I mean, what they could do the Europeans had already done for them, which is stopped exports of Russian oil and gas. I mean, the Europeans already facing the highest energy costs in the world are now going to stop importing Russian LNG, which is incredible. I mean, it makes no sense at all. Russian imports of Russian LNG have been growing because Europe needs LNG. So the de-industrialisation processes in Europe are going to intensify and living standards for Europeans are going to get worse.

And of course, Europe has depended very heavily on the transfer trade. Russian crude oil to India. India refines the oil, re-exports it back to Europe. Whatever happens, that business, that trade is not. now going to become more complicated than it was, and that means that oil, refined oil in Europe is going to be more expensive, much more expensive than it used to be. So the Europeans are ultimately sanctioning themselves. And China is now starting to take further measures, like the ones that they've already done. And again, one gets the sense of None of this ever is thought through.

The Russians have just, they've said, I'm all really assumed that they would say that this isn't going to move the dial with their economy at all, that they can always find ways around, and of course they can. What about uranium sales to the United States from Russia? Is that significant? Or, I mean, would Russia ever stop that?

Well, it could do. And it might do at some point. I mean, you know, there's always, there's always these possibilities. I mean, aluminium exports, which apparently still continue as well, all that kind of thing. So, yes, I mean, if we are catapulted into an all-out economic war, up to now, the Russians have been unwilling to do that because Russia launching an all-out economic war against the West would have had downsides for other trading partners of the Russians themselves.

But given that it is the West now that seems intent on launching an economic war against that pretty much everybody, we are probably, we're probably heading into that game. And again, one wonders what exactly Trump himself thinks he's doing, whether he thinks that these latest sanctions against Luke Oil and Rosneft are going to get Lindsay Graham company off his back, he's wrong, it'll do the opposite. Those people, if you throw them a bone, they will always come back and they will always demand more. But, you know, or whether he thinks this is going to give him leverage over the Russians,

as I said, the Council for Foreign Relations, the most eminent body of thoughts on foreign policy in the United States, Thomas Graham there, you say you won't. Yeah, I don't think Trump is making any decisions. I think he's just taking orders when it goes to foreign policy. So I would say it's more of a dynamic of the Lindsay Graham's telling Trump what to do. They're probably the ones that are telling Bessent. This is what you're going to do. And maybe Besson then discusses it with Trump.

Maybe he notifies Trump. But I've been told by the senators that I'm going to move forward with the sanctions on Luke Goyle and Ross Neft. And I guess Trump has to go along with that. That would be my imagination as to how all of this is playing out. because Trump obviously has no say in the matter at all. Why doesn't China, because the European Union is launching an economic war against China. Why doesn't China, well, isn't China going to then more openly support Russia in its kinetic war? Or why doesn't China more openly support Russia in the kinetic war?

I mean, in production terms. Well, it probably will. The Chinese up to now, I mean, the stance they have always taken, which is a very characteristic stance, it's one very consistent with Chinese foreign policy is that they're not involved in the war. They don't support either side. They've even offered their good services in the past as a mediator.

They have a person, Li Hui, a Chinese diplomat, who's supposed to be trying to get some kind of mediation, Chinese-led mediation between Ukraine and Russia going. Anyway, that's always been the stance that they have taken up to now because it has been consistent with their foreign policy. And if you look at their statements, they say China never pours oil on the flames. It never makes situations like that worse. But I think that is changing.

And one of the big changes, you start to start. to see this happen over the last couple of weeks and they're consequential. China signed off on power of Siberia 2. It's apparently, well, it is buying liquefied natural gas from a Russian LNG producer which is heavily sanctioned by the United States. It's allowing Indian oil buyers to pay Russia in Chinese currency. It's allowing Russian companies to float on Chinese financial markets. It's apparently going to accept meerkards and the Russians are going to reciprocate with

union pay. China lifted visa restrictions on Russians. So Russians can now have visa-free access to China, and Russia has just reciprocated by agreeing to visa-free access for Chinese who want to come to Russia. So all of this has happened quickly over the last couple of weeks. And the latest word is that China is also preparing now to buy Russian aircraft engines, because there's been some problems with their own aircraft engines, the engines they've been making for their civil airliners.

So all of this has happened again over the last couple of weeks, and clearly there's been a decision made at the highest level in Beijing that we don't worry or concern ourselves with sanctions anymore. This is, by the way, the problem with sanctions. If you start sanctioning a company because it is dealing with Russia, then what you will find is that the only business that company can then do is with Russia. So it commits them to working more closely with the Russian market than it might otherwise have done. Apparently, this has hit some of the insurers, maritime insurers who took out insurance for Shadow Fleet Tank. They, in turn, got sanctioned.

And so what is their business now? Ensuring Sandow Fleet Tankers. So the more you do this, the more you do this, the more impossible to enforce it becomes, and the less effective it becomes. Do you think Trump's tariffs have any weight now against China or India? No, I don't think so. I think that... Or has it been exhausted now as well?

think they've been exhausted as well. I think that, well, I mean, of course, he's talking about imposing 157% tariffs against China again on the 1st of November. You might do. I mean, we might find ourselves back there again. But what will then happen is that China will then impose its restrictions on rare earth imports. It's now strongly positioned to do that. It's set up the entire mechanisms to do that. But it doesn't seem like a very good idea. And he's desperate to meet Xi Jinping. The Chinese are playing hardball on that.

That meeting is perhaps starting to look unlikely. And Modi, as I said, isn't going to ASEAN for the obvious reason. He doesn't want to talk to Trump. Why would he want to talk to Trump, given that Trump is making up conversations with Modi? which never even happened. Yeah, I think everyone is getting everyone. I think everyone in the global south is getting very, very tired of Trump

and his instability. Yes. Well, it's exhausting. It's exhausting. People, it's exhausting leaders. It's exhausting markets. Yeah, I mean, you can't function like that. The world can't function like this anymore

with anticipation, fear, or dread as to what Trump is going to do the next day. Yes. Exactly. I mean, they're going to start taking more and more steps in order to bypass him, which, of course, means, in the end, bypassing the United States. Now, 10, 20 years ago, that would have been impossible, but it is not impossible now. Yeah. All right.

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