US readies sanctions over Russian petroleum supplies to North Korea

Russia shipped more than 165,000 barrels of refined petroleum to North Korea in March in defiance of UN sanctions, the White House said on Thursday.

The US is preparing sanctions to target those aiding such transfers between Russia and North Korea and will co-ordinate its actions with other international partners, US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said on Thursday.

“The United States is going to continue to impose sanctions against all those working to facilitate arms and refined petroleum transfers between Russia and the DPRK,” Kirby said.

The White House on Thursday also condemned North Korea’s shipments of ballistic missiles to Russia, which has been using them in its war against Ukraine. Pyongyang has been supplying significant quantities of munitions to Russia since last August.

The Financial Times first reported in March that Russia had begun supplying oil directly to North Korea, violating sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council in 2017 in response to Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons tests. North Korea is only permitted to bring in 500,000 barrels annually, with imports required to be reported to a UN sanctions committee.

Russia is able to continue such shipments from its Vostochny Port “indefinitely”, given the proximity of ports in both countries, Kirby said.

The FT previously reported on research by the Royal United Services Institute, a London think-tank, which showed the first documented direct seaborne deliveries of Russian oil since 2017.

The institute used satellite photographs and ship transponder traffic to show evidence of at least five North Korean vessels loading at the same berth in Vostochny Port in the Russian far east, in March.

Two of the ships were then caught seeming to unload at Chongjin, 160 nautical miles away on North Korea’s east coast.

Joseph Byrne, a research fellow at Rusi, told the FT in March that “while there is a debate about the effectiveness of sanctions, what we are now seeing is what would start to happen if the sanctions were removed. This is giving North Korea a very significant lift.”

The new data from the White House comes after Russia used its veto to disband a UN panel of experts monitoring the enforcement of UN sanctions against Pyongyang for its nuclear weapons and missile programmes.

“This was a calculated move on Russia’s part to hide its own violations of Security Council resolutions,” Kirby said.