Global sanctions meet the digital age in a recent interesting bit of FT analysis, which concluded that a single email server may have exposed what amounts to a $90 billion shadow pipeline for Russian crude. While Western media and officials would consider this an ‘illicit’ sprawling sanctions-evasion machine hiding in plain sight, Moscow sees US-EU efforts to stamp out its international energy trade as an unjust tactic to impose total economic isolation related to the Putin’s ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine. The Financial Times report alleges that “48 seemingly independent companies working from different physical addresses” in reality appear to be “operating together to disguise the origin of Russian oil, particularly from Kremlin-controlled Rosneft.” Source: Shutterstock Discovery of a common backend infrastructure reportedly exposes the scheme, as on the surface it looked like a fragmented web of independent traders – while digitally, it was one ecosystem. For example, the FT identified 442 web domains all routed through the same private server – “mx.phoenixtrading.ltd” – with 19 of those domains reportedly tied to Russian businesses, spanning energy and real estate …