UK Calls on Georgia to Curb Russian Oil Imports Amid Wider Sanctions
The United Kingdom has called on Georgia to reduce its reliance on Russian oil and to strengthen efforts to prevent imports from the “Russian shadow fleet,” a day after it sanctioned a company that recently shipped oil to a Georgian refinery.
On December 18, the UK published a list of new Russia sanctions as part of expanded European measures against Moscow targeting “revenues critical to the war effort.” Among the new targets is Russneft, a Russian oil company that shipped oil to Georgia’s newly-launched Kulevi refinery in October.
“We call on all our partners, including Georgia, to strengthen efforts to prevent imports from the Russian shadow fleet, which not only seeks to evade sanctions but also ignores safety and environmental standards, posing serious risks to maritime security,” the British embassy said in a December 19 statement. “We hope that Georgia can protect its energy security by reducing its growing reliance on Russian oil, which has increased since 2022, and reducing the flow of revenue to Russia’s war machine,” it added.
According to the statement, the new measures aim to “remove Russian oil from the global market by targeting an additional four producers, along with networks facilitating the illicit Russian oil trade.”
In October, Reuters reported that Russneft supplied, earlier in the same month, the first oil cargo to Georgia’s newly built Kulevi refinery on the Black Sea coast.
While Georgian authorities maintained at the time that the shipment complied with international sanctions, it nevertheless raised concerns that such deliveries could open a potential channel for “Georgian” re-exports of Russian oil. Soon after the Reuters report, Kayseri, a vessel that delivered a shipment, was also added to the EU’s sanctions list targeting Russia’s “shadow fleet” of tankers facilitating the sale of Russian oil.
In the December 19 statement, the British embassy also pointed to Georgia recently signing a convention establishing the International Claims Commission for Ukraine, a measure coming as part of a broader international compensation mechanism for Kyiv amid the Russian aggression.
“Georgia was also one of the signatories of the Convention, continuing its approach of supporting Ukraine in multinational fora, condemning Russia’s aggression, and holding Russia accountable for its violations of human rights,” the Embassy wrote.
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