Sanctions are starting to work on the front line

This week I reveal how crippling sanctions have scored a direct hit on Putin's deadly tanks - but Moscow is still bypassing the trade bans by getting technology for his missiles.

After 19 months of fighting, international sanctions are beginning to bite

Hello and welcome to Hostile World with Chris Hughes, a weekly newsletter about the world of defence and geopolitics. You can subscribe here and follow me on Twitter @defencechris. Thank you!

INTERNATIONAL sanctions may seem to take ages to take effect against regimes but imagine if they dealt a direct and devastating blow to the Kremlin’s modern tank barrels.

What if I were to tell you that many once-deadly T-90s on the battlefield can only fire accurately to about two miles now – as opposed to almost five miles as it could before the war?

This metallic beast is at the centre of Putin’s cruel war in Ukraine but after 19 months of fighting international sanctions are beginning to bite - despite Moscow’s efforts to circumvent them.

So much so that it is believed many of the T-90s are now more than 50% less accurate on the battlefield.

The blow to Russia’s frontline troops is just one way in which Ukraine’s embattled President Zelensky has been told sanctions are directly hitting Moscow’s war effort.

This week I interviewed one of Ukraine’s leading sanctions experts Pavlo Verkhniatskyi, who runs his own Kyiv-based corporate intelligence firm COSA Solutions.