Opinion: Australia’s plodding action against Putin’s oligarchs | CroweDM
Assurances about the Australian response to the war in Ukraine can offer the impression of action when the reality is very different inside the machinery that has to maximise pressure on Russia if the conflict is to end. The wheels are turning too slowly in a Western political system that is being forced to adjust to the brutality of Vladimir Putin after years of thinking, foolishly and complacently, that he could be contained.
Only in the past few days, when the media stepped up questions, has there been the slightest hint from Canberra that it would do something about the two oligarchs and their stake in a Queensland refinery that gives its Russian investors the right to 600,000 tonnes of alumina every year.Morrison wants to toughen the measures against Russia and he heard a direct appeal for greater action when he spoke to Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal on Wednesday night.
The warnings about these oligarchs are not new. The US imposed sanctions on Rusal in 2018 because of Deripaska’s links to Putin, although it withdrew them within a year when he seemed to step back from the company. The stake in the Queensland refinery should have been on the radar at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade well before the invasion on February 24.
The Falcon issue is more complex because the oligarch has a minority stake in a foreign company with a minority stake in a project that is yet to produce anything. The government can name Vekselberg but this does not mean a sanction on Falcon. The assumption, so far, is that he does not control the company.
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