As reported by Interfax, Pyotr Karakchiyev claimed that efforts by Western nations to sanction the Russian diamond industry have fallen flat because of the lack of tracing technology.
Alrosa’s head of international cooperation reportedly mocked the US and EU during a recent address, suggesting they had little understanding of the trade.
"The sanctions that our adversaries dreamed up were supposed to affect us in a big way, but they are not achieving the necessary effect, at least for them," he said.
"Tracing is one of the key conditions that the G7 wanted to bring in to stop Russian gemstones from entering Western markets. This is not working now. There is no technical solution."
“This, among other things, enables the company to continue to work actively on international markets, and the G7 countries to constantly delay introducing the tracing.”
The G7 nations sanctioned the Russian diamond industry in January 2024, with plans to introduce a tracing platform in September. The tracing aspect of the sanctions was delayed for the first time to March 2025 and then again to January 2026.
Since 2022, there has been a general ban on directly importing diamonds from Russia to the US. In May 2024, Reuters reported that the US had ‘disconnected’ from G7 working groups formulating sanctions against the Russian diamond trade due to industry backlash.
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