Paul Goble
Staunton, Aug. 21 – Despite Western sanctions, Russia remains a major player in the world market of diamonds and other gems; and the money from such sales in Europe and the United States overwhelmingly goes into Russian government coffers and has been used by Putin to finance his expanded war in Ukraine.
Given how much attention has been given to limiting Russia’s export of oil and gas, it is surprising that to date little has been said about this other large source of Moscow’s income, but that is the unsettling conclusion of research by Russian investigative journalist Pavel Kanygin and the Arctica Project (prosleduet.media/details/russian-diamonds/).
Despite the well-publicized exit from the Russian diamond market of Tiffany and ever tighter restrictions on the sale of Russian diamonds abroad, Russia still supplies nearly 30 percent of the world’s diamonds which being light weight relative to value are far easier to slip through the system.
And because the total world diamond market is in the tens of billions of US dollars ever year, Russia both through Alrossa and its allied daughter companies takes in enormous sums, almost all of which go to the Russian government which can then use them for Putin’s war in Ukraine.
The exist of Western firms from the Russian gem market and sanctions are unlikely to cut into that amount unless Western governments take actions like the ones they did against the so-called “blood diamonds” sold by some African governments to finance wars against neighbors and their own people.
It is long past time, the analysis by Kanygin and Arctica suggests, for the West to extend the concept of “blood diamonds” to Russia given that Putin is using money from the sale of diamonds and other gems in exactly the same way as those African regimes who have seen their incomes fall since that designation was applied to their products.
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