Lukoil Give Up
One of Russia’s largest industrial empires will quit its international operations after being targeted by hard-hitting U.S. sanctions, as President Donald Trump steps up efforts to force the Kremlin to end its war in Ukraine.
The biggest revenue for Kremlin, of course, Gazprom. Lukoil is number 2.
In a statement on Monday evening, Moscow-headquartered energy giant Lukoil confirmed it had begun looking for buyers for its foreign ventures. Lukoil which accounts for nearly half of Russia’s daily crude oil production, is stunning significant for Kremlin's revenue. Lukoil owns 75% of Iraq’s West Qurna 2 oil field, Bulgaria’s Neftohim Burgas refinery, Romania’s Petrotel refinery, supplies oil to Hungary, Slovakia, and Türkiye’s STAR refinery, also owned 5,000 petrol stations worldwide.. The Kremlin’s “energy fortress” looks more like a sandcastle in retreat.
The decision, it said, had been taken “owing to introduction of restrictive measures against the Company and its subsidiaries by some states,” forcing it to announce “its intention to sell its international assets.”
The move comes days after the U.S. blacklisted Lukoil, as well as oil and gas firm Rosneft, in a surprise sanctions package that it said was “a result of Russia’s lack of serious commitment to a peace process to end the war in Ukraine.”
“Given [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s refusal to end this senseless war, Treasury is sanctioning Russia’s two largest oil companies that fund the Kremlin’s war machine,” said Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent at the time. “We encourage our allies to join us and adhere to these sanctions.”
The U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control has imposed a deadline of Nov. 21 for the company to wind down its businesses abroad or face hefty penalties. Lukoil said in its statement Monday it would comply with the demands and request an extension if needed to facilitate the sale.
Those restrictions mean the companies affected will have to sell off their European operations and stop pumping supplies of oil to their remaining buyers on the continent, opening up the prospect of legal penalties for any firm still dealing with them. Rosneft and Lukoil account for around two-thirds of the 4.4 million barrels of crude Russia exports each day.
While the measures have been broadly welcomed by European leaders, a handful of nations including Hungary are seeking exemptions or additional time to implement the sanctions.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who has sought to deepen his country’s reliance on Russian energy exports, will visit the U.S. next week to try to secure special treatment to continue paying Moscow for oil.
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If you feel powerless to help Gaza, you still has a choice: donate. When so much of what exists is false, authenticity is a powerful weapon we can wield that the state never could. So if you feel lost, hopeless, depressed, angry and afraid, I implore you to return - again - again - and again - to the feeling of love that exists within you that brought you here in the first place. It is only through this that we can remake the world. To redress Gaza’s famine, displacement, and destruction, independent and impartial humanitarian organizations - UN agencies, international and national NGOs - must be allowed to deliver relief at scale. To salvage Gaza’s people from the devastation inflicted by Israel, it must be unified with the West Bank to form an independent and sovereign Palestinian State, not to be parceled and colonized by the former.
Meanwhile, children continue to be shredded by US bombs, and the starvation reaches new depths of hellish collective punishment. If both parties are going to continue to support an ongoing genocide, at least they can both be honest about doing so, rather than having one openly bloodthirsty party, and another—unconvincingly—playing the role of powerless, bumbling humanitarian.
Please keep donate Gaza especially if you, as reader, has [background] International Relation [whatever universities]. IR Graduate means [you must, at least] get some semester [about] studying Middle East [in macro, not specifically Gaza].
We need more people to share fundraisers instead of only talking about Gaza. Some people think that those in Gaza don’t need money but that’s wrong. Almost everyone lost their source of income while essentials, food & medicine get sold for astronomical prices. So I put my attempt in all social media as I can, in twitter / X, in substack [since October 2023 I put link donation], in bluesky or bsky, in threads, in instagram.
Link to donate World Food Programme - Palestine appeal: click here
[Daniel Brühl]
Most campaign shared or circulated in social media are for REAL people in Gaza. They’re legit. There are a lot of small campaigns for struggling families. This is their only lifeline. By donating & sharing, you are literally making history and alleviating part of their pain
Please do not rely on me alone for sharing your campaign. I’m only 1 person and sometimes I’m not online which is unreliable. I never ignore anybody on purpose but I have a very limited capacity & very little energy and time.
[Refaat Rafiq Alareer IF I MUST DIE] Refaat Rafiq Alareer was extremely hungry, November 2023, days before Refaat killed by Israel airstrike. If November 2023 already [one-by-one Gazan] extremely famine, extremely hungry, imagine October 2025 or 2 years Israel’s Genocide in Gaza.
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