UK eases Russian oil curbs after Hormuz fuel shock

UPDATED: May 21, 2026 23:16 IST

The United Kingdom spent two years telling the world it had the toughest sanctions against Russia. Then, on a quiet Tuesday, it published a licence allowing Russian oil, refined in India and Turkey, to flow back into British markets. No press conference. No announcement. Just a document slipped onto a government website. The Trade Minister later told Parliament the government had "handled it clumsily." That is a careful phrase for what was, by any honest reading, a significant reversal.

The trigger was the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz following the outbreak of the US Iran war. More than half of Europe's jet fuel moved through that waterway. When it shut, prices moved at a speed few governments anticipated. In late February, jet fuel traded at 831 dollars per tonne in Europe. By early April, it touched 1,838 dollars. Airlines cancelled flights. Fuel budgets collapsed. The UK then issued what it called a phase in of its planned ban on Russian crude refined in third countries. Critics called it a waiver. Ukraine's sanctions commissioner said he understood the rationale but disagreed with the result. His concern was direct: temporary exemptions still generate revenue for Russia's war machine.

The UK was not alone. The United States extended a similar arrangement for Russian oil cargoes at sea. The European Union criticised that decision at a meeting of G7 finance ministers whilst its own member states were quietly seeking ways to maintain their Russian energy supplies.

That is where Hungary and Slovakia sit in this story. Neither country ever fully left the Russian oil orbit. Both rely on the Druzhba pipeline, which carries Russian crude into Central European refineries built specifically for Russian grade crude. Switching to alternatives requires years of infrastructure change. Hungary's Viktor Orban had blocked a 90 billion euro EU loan to Ukraine until the Druzhba pipeline was restored after a drone strike damaged a section running through Ukrainian territory. Slovakia backed the veto.

Orban lost Hungary's April election. The pipeline restarted almost immediately afterwards. The EU loan was approved the same morning. One election shifted the entire balance, which tells you a great deal about how fragile the political architecture around sanctions had become.

The reason pipeline oil has always been treated differently from seaborne Russian crude comes down to geography. The EU banned seaborne shipments, which accounted for between 70 and 85 per cent of Russian oil reaching Europe by tanker. That did real damage to Russian revenues. But landlocked refineries in Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic had no immediate alternatives. Shutting them off overnight meant refinery closures and domestic energy crises that no government in Brussels was prepared to own politically.

The result is a sanctions structure with a gap that was never fully closed, and which has now been widened by a global energy shock that Russia played no part in creating.

That is the central, uncomfortable fact in this story. Putin did not start the US Iran war. He did not close the Strait of Hormuz. He did nothing to cause European jet fuel prices to nearly double within weeks. But every consequence of that crisis moved in his direction. The UK loosened sanctions. Parts of Europe pushed for pipeline oil. The Druzhba restarted. Russian linked crude kept moving.

Putin did not win this round. A crisis dropped it in his lap. For Ukraine, that distinction is almost impossible to find.

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