Memo to press: There are no US sanctions on Russia's big oil companies

[Update, 27 Oct. I was wrong in implying the sanctions would have no immediate effect. Russia's Lukoil announced today "its intention to sell its international assets," even though sanctions' "wind down" period, as referenced below, extends to 21 Nov. This post's ending thrust, however — "the only way to stop Putin is to kick his weaponized ass across the Russian border" — remains irrefutably valid. At any rate, my apology for the post's misleading implication.]

Every major press outlet I read this morning — The NY Times, The Washington Post, CNN, and Reuters — announced that Trump has imposed sanctions on Russia's two largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil.

In the past three hours I spent two writing a post on his sensational "policy shift." I linked to the press reports, quoted their "has imposed sanctions" lines, read Treasury Department directives, and compiled sundry thoughts on it all. In the last hour I tried to recover the post, since somehow I accidentally dropped one of my notorious, techno-idiocy bunker busters on it.

I didn't invest the time only to rehash what the press had dished out. I spent the time because each of the stories was inaccurate.

U.S. sanctions on Russian oil are slated to be imposed. But they don't kick in until 21 November.

The foulest of all stenches invariably hangs in the air whenever Trump says or otherwise announces this or that. For lies, damn lies, head fakes and misinformation are what Donald Trump is, chronically, pathologically.

And this morning, the ambient air once again reeked of his putrescent odor. During my background research, had I not run across a piece from the Atlantic Council, I would have dismissed, in a shocking first-ever moment, my reactivated fifth sense as an olfactory glitch.

Call it learned cynicism, call it serendipity, call it an angelic chorus crooning or a Greek tragedy's deus ex machina — fact is, I did click on the Atlantic Council piece. Where I discovered this:

"The US Treasury Department also issued a general license on Wednesday that will 'allow for a wind down of transactions with Rosneft and Lukoil, which expires on November 21."(Bold, mine.)

"This window should give countries that purchase large amounts of Russian oil, such as China and India, 'time to decide if they will stop importing Russian oil.'"

That glimmering gem of a note I somehow missed among a half-dozen, indescribably semantics-tangled Treasury pronunciamentos on the sanctions. I could say perhaps four inaccurate stories on them from national press outlets intensified the blurring of my radar screen, but that would be a cheap excuse for my having blundered.

Yet always there is the stink of Trump, the researcher's little helper.

In my astray, unsalvageable post were maybe 600 words: notations and bits of history. There were thoughts on Trump's now-countless threats followed by their vaporous exterminations, Vladimir Putin's cozy knowledge of his fellow authoritarian's interminable weakness, Vlad's evasions of actual international restrictions on his oil-fueled obscenities, and other profoundly disheartening items involving the savage reality of the Russia-Ukraine war.

My vanished post’s concluding remark was, simply, that the only way to stop Putin is to kick his weaponized ass across the Russian border. But after such labors and the post’s disappearing act, I’m just as simply too used up to reconstruct its content.

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Cross-posted in Substack.