The never-ending job of depriving Putin of the means to kill Ukrainians

China is a “growing problem” as a circumvention hub for the EU’s sanctions against Russia, the envoy said. Some 70 to 80 percent of Russia’s Western inputs of battlefield and some dual-use items travel via China or Hong Kong.

“We have raised this with the Chinese, who are not particularly responsive, it must be said,” O’Sullivan lamented in his office on the eighth floor of the European Commission’s Berlaymont headquarters.

In its 14th package of Russia sanctions, the EU listed 19 companies in China and Hong Kong. This means EU companies can no longer do business with them.

“If we identify Chinese companies facilitating this kind of trade — of EU- or G7-sanctioned products — we will act. We would prefer if there were some systemic action taken in China. But that doesn’t look to be on the cards for the moment.”

“The Chinese take a strong position that they’re an independent country and that they’re not applying our sanctions,” O’Sullivan said. However, the fact chips or cameras or lasers goes into lethal weapons “makes the conversation quite different than any other form of circumvention, like with luxury goods.”

Next up: Vietnam and Malaysia

China and Hong Kong loom large, but they aren’t the envoy’s only targets. “We’ve seen a slight eastward drift in the in the circumvention lately,” said O’Sullivan, who initially focused on countries in regions closer to Europe: Serbia, Turkey, the Caucasus, Central Asia and the United Arab Emirates.