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What, are you gonna go back in time and check to see if I'm lying? Not Ylilauta, of course, and what kind of a stupid question is what year? Get a grip.

I was genuinely curious. This has to do with the credibility of the sources. I'm not saying you are lying.

I was inquiring the year because the situation may have changed.

My recollections aren't specific because the sources are not particularly credible, which is why I never mentioned it outside of our conversation. Anonymous posters on boards can have no credibility. It should have been clear from the context that it was this year.

Your questions seemed pointed to me, but I'm short sleep and may have simply hallucinated ill intent.

Regardless of sources, given the sanctions on Russia, I doubt they're doing a lot of shipping through the Baltic, although the ongoing trade they undertake with the Ukraine may belie that assumption.

Russian trade has shifted toward its eastern and southern neighbors, that's clear. But it is selling oil to countries like India and the tankers must use existing infrastructure. The news story I read in March this year was about Danish pilots onboard Russian tankers navigating the Danish Straights.

There is a price cap on Russian oil in effect since December 2022. The idea is not to prevent Russia from selling oil at all but to limit the profitability of that oil selling.

Sorry about sounding harsh.

Well, we're not availed pricing information I'm aware of, but I bet Russia's paying dearly for transiting their energy supplies across Ukraine through those pipelines, and charges dearly for the diesel they sell the Ukraine - if that is still ongoing. I am not apprised of the applicability of price caps to trade with the Ukraine, which isn't part of the EU, nor NATO.

I doubt the Ukraine pays any attention to such matters anyway, since arms sent to the Ukraine are turning up in the arsenals of cartels in Mexico, for example. Hopefully something will be done about that now that the pics from the Biden laptop will be public information.

With the DOJ, FBI, CIA, and the enemedia quite comfortable with committing sedition and treason censoring Americans, interfering with elections, and waging disinformation and propaganda campaigns against a sitting US President, we're getting awfully close to torch and pitchfork territory. Most Americans eyes glaze over when bombarded with such things, but Hunter's got a bunch of pics of underage girls coming out, and that's something that gets Americans' attention.

They do think of the children.

I appreciate your apology. Like I said, I should have slept before I snapped back at you. It's all on me.

Ukraine is a small market. The price cap on Russian oil exports is agreed upon by G7. It is enforced through shipping ensurers, most of which are very large corporations based in Western countries.

Urals is selling at a considerable discount compared to the other benchmarks:

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Brent normally sells at a premium of about 2-3 dollars per barrel compared to Urals. Today, the difference is almost 15 dollars per barrel.

https://oilprice.com/oil-price-charts/

You'd think that would really hit Russia hard.

However, I remember just a few weeks ago when Germany shut down it's last three nuclear reactors and raised electricity prices 45%. Yesterday I read that Germany is officially in a recession.

I don't recall reading that about Russia. Seems like the sanctions are hitting the wrong countries to me. Maybe blowing up Germany's Nordstream pipeline didn't hurt Russia as much as it did Germany. In fact, it seems Europe is buying record amounts of Russian oil, just not buying it from Russia, but paying extra to buy it from India and other intermediaries.

It's pretty hard to believe that the people that have outsmarted all the other geniuses in the world to control all the financial assets in the developed world could have made such fundamental economic mistakes that the sanctions they put on Russia have enabled Russia to grow it's economy while putting them into recession.

Maybe it's not an accident?