“Mystery Middlemen” Make Billions From Sanctioned Russian Crude

One year ago, conventional wisdom was that Western nations would throttle Russian oil exports to starve Putin's war machine, depriving the Kremlin of much needed cash, tipping the scales of global oil markets into a state of demand imbalance, and sending the price of crude high in the triple digit stratosphere.

It ended up being just the opposite, and despite the pompous rhetoric and countless "sanctions", Western government did everything in their power to enable Putin to export as much oil as possible to willing buyers such as India and China.…