Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will on Wednesday visit the UK for the first time since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. News of his visit came as Russian forces ramped up a winter assault in eastern Ukraine, bringing tens of thousands of freshly mobilised troops to the battlefield.
Western sanctions against Russia are creating a parallel oil market, the chief executive of French oil major TotalEnergies said on Wednesday.
“We had a relatively transparent, well-functioning global oil market .. I understand the political objective, but I don’t think we have fully appreciated the consequences,” Patrick Pouyanne told reporters after his company posted a record profit for 2022. “There is no longer a unified oil market […] With all these bans, we are creating a grey market for oil,” he said adding that Russia was “without a doubt capable of selling its products elsewhere.”
