From May 19-21 2023, the G7 summit took place in Hiroshima. Weeks before, it had already become known that the G7 countries wanted to work out a concept by the beginning of the summit, with which international action should be taken against the trade in Russian diamonds. We already reported on this at the beginning of April, you can read the news article here.
The background to this is that the Russian company Alrosa is responsible for just under a third of the world's mined diamonds each year. Since Alrosa is largely state-owned, the revenues from the diamond trade presumably also flow into the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. Restricting trade in Russian diamonds would therefore mean reducing the funds available to Russia to finance the war.
Shortly before the G7 summit, Great Britain announced that it would not only sanction Russian diamonds in the future, but also stop the import of various metals such as nickel or copper, as Blickpunkt Juwelier reports. Comparable sanctions on the part of the EU are still awaited.
It is very pleasing that the UK, as one of the most important European buyers of Russian diamonds, is clearly taking a stand with its sanction plans. Even though it is difficult to clearly trace mined diamonds back to their origin and thus sanctions may not be 100% effective, it is nevertheless above all a clear sign that mined diamonds should not be under any special treatment with regard to trade sanctions against Russia.
We hope that the EU, in particular, will also soon initiate appropriate measures and thus do its part to inhibit Russia's war financing.
Source: Article "Großbritannien sanktioniert Import von russischen Diamanten" in Blickpunkt Juwelier from 23 May 2023
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