News & Comment

Less than a year ago, Niger was ruled by “Western poster boy” Mohamed Bazoum. “But it wasn’t a rose garden,” said Simon Rynn, a senior research fellow for African security at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a London-based think tank.

At 10:15 a.m. this morning, the Treasury Committee will hold the first in a series of evidence sessions on whether the U.K.’s sanctions on Russia are working following its invasion of Ukraine. There’ll be a particular focus on the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI) — a public body affiliated with the Treasury. Speakers today are Tom Keatinge, director at RUSI, Ben Cowdock, senior lead at Transparency International UK, and Natalia Kubesch, legal officer at Redress.

“Ultimately, the dissolution of the Panel of Experts signals further decay and dysfunction of multilateralism,” said Aaron Arnold, a U.S. representative who served on the panel from 2019 to 2021. “Furthermore, without a monitoring system in place, there’s not a lot of incentive for countries to rigorously uphold their sanctions obligations.”... Last week, the Royal United Services Institute, a U.K. think tank, shared satellite imagery of a Russian-flagged vessel recently docked at a Chinese shipyard. The U.S.-sanctioned cargo ship, named Angara, has been previously spotted making at least 11 transits between North Korea and Russia since last August, believed to be carrying North Korean munitions, according to the institute.