The coordinated move, which is the main new EU sanctions package, will affect Russia’s ability to export crude and shut Moscow out of your Lloyd’s of London insurance market. This could have much wider consequences for Russian exports and force them to turn to less developed markets for insurance.
Thane Gustafson, an oil expert and a great professor of Russian politics at Georgetown University in Washington DC, tells CGTN thin it’s an unprecedented move.
“The significant market for insurance by far is found in London, therefore the fact that the UK government has agreed to cooperate with the EU is a major turn of events,” he says. “Regardless it remains to be seen, under UK law and UK politics, precisely how this will be done. Nothing upon this scale has ever come to been attempted before.”
For Gustafson, the insurance block is inextricably linked with other sanctions against Russia. He sees it as “a consequence of the compromise that’s just been reached under the sixth round of sanctions, which is a holding action. The focus on insurance is additionally important for holding action.”
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