South Shaheen
In late 2024, UK and EU sanctions quietly landed on a 63-year-old Canadian-Pakistani oil trader named Murtaza Ali Lakhani. The charge was that through a web of trading firms, Tejarinaft, Fossil Trading, and a Dubai-based entity called Amur II, Lakhani had allegedly helped Russian crude slip through the cracks of Western sanctions. British authorities accused his network of becoming “some of the largest traders of Russian oil since 2022,” profiting from flows that help finance Russia’s Special Military Operation in Ukraine.
The significance was not simply that a trader had been sanctioned. It was who was sanctioned, when, and what it revealed. While officials in Islamabad publicly agonised over refinery compatibility, insurance clauses, and payment mechanisms, the Lakhani case exposed an inconvenient truth: the architecture for moving Russian oil already exists. It is functional and sophisticated. And it has been operating under fire. China absorbed discounted volumes, and India dramatically increased purchases while maintaining strategic ambiguity. Middle Eastern hubs became intermediaries. What looked chaotic from the outside was, in reality, a quiet, Western-backed rewiring of the global energy map. Pakistan entered this picture late and cautiously.
The Myth of “Technical Difficulty.”
Pakistan officially began importing Russian crude in mid-2023, starting with trial cargoes of roughly 100,000 metric tonnes. The volumes were modest, irregular, and cautious. Officials cited familiar obstacles: Pakistani refineries are tuned for lighter Middle Eastern blends; freight costs from Russia are higher; insurance and letters of credit are complicated under sanctions; foreign exchange is scarce. All of this is true. But it is also incomplete. Because the same obstacles did not stop private traders from moving Russian oil globally through Dubai hubs, non-Western shipping, alternative currencies, and opaque corporate structures. The Lakhani sanctions demonstrated that these systems were not theoretical. They were operational.
What the Pakistani state lacked was not capacity, but plausible deniability. A government-to-government oil deal triggers IMF scrutiny, sanctions risk, banking compliance alarms, and diplomatic blowback. A trader, however, absorbs that risk until the day he doesn’t. Pakistan’s hesitation then was sanctions management. This explains why Islamabad repeatedly signalled preference for “private-sector-led” imports, avoided formal long-term contracts, and downplayed reports of state-level agreements even as talks with Moscow continued. But energy economics alone do not explain why Pakistan has persisted despite the friction. For that, we have to look east.
India, Russia, and the May 2025 shock
The May 2025 India-Pakistan military escalation was a strategic wake-up call. Western capitals urged restraint. China, of course, backed Pakistan unconditionally, but Russia also remained comfortably aligned with New Delhi. This matters because Russia is not just another power. It is the one major actor outside the West whose voice India consistently values. Historically, Moscow has been India’s principal arms supplier and diplomatic shield. Pakistan has spent decades locked out of that equation.
Under current conditions, the United States is more structurally tilted toward India, and Europe follows Washington’s lead. Therefore, Russia emerges as the only plausible swing power in South Asia. That is the inversion at work: Pakistan is not courting Moscow despite its ties to New Delhi, but because those ties make Russian neutrality strategically very valuable.
Russia and China are now strategic partners under sustained Western pressure. Pakistan is China’s closest regional ally. That triangular reality has begun to reshape Islamabad’s calculus. If Moscow is already aligned with Beijing, deeper ties with Pakistan are no longer ideologically awkward. They are structurally logical and necessary.
For a Russia operating under sanctions, energy ties outside the Western system are not optional; they are essential. Pakistan’s market is smaller than India’s. Still, its value is strategic rather than volumetric: access to ports, refining cooperation, LNG potential, and the political signal that Moscow is not tied to a single South Asian partner. Energy relationships create tangible interests, which lead to contracts creating stakeholders, while infrastructure then creates commitment.
The goal is not to make Russia pro-Pakistan. That would be unrealistic. The aim is more modest and achievable: to make Moscow less instinctively pro-India. A Russia with oil, gas, or refining exposure in Pakistan has reasons to preserve neutrality during future crises. In realist terms, Pakistan is not merely purchasing oil because it is also purchasing friction enough to disrupt automatic alignment.
The Warning Embedded in the Sanctions
By sanctioning Lakhani, a Pakistani-born trader with deep experience in operating where others will not, London and Brussels have sent a message that says nationality, proximity, or political familiarity offers no immunity if one is seen to be aiding Russia’s war economy. The timing matters. His blocklisting came just as Pakistan announced expanded energy talks with Moscow. Any perceived attempt to aid Russian sanctions circumvention, whether by state or private actors, will invite punitive action.
Years before sanctions made his name infamous, Lakhani was unusually candid about the logic that governed his world. Speaking at Russia’s St. Petersburg Forum, he dismissed the idea that isolating Russian energy could ever succeed. “This country is the largest resource country in the world,” he said. “Hampering it is a very short-term effect, not a long-term goal for anybody. They will always need Russia.”
The world’s energy system cannot function without Russia, yet Western power is increasingly organised around pretending it can. Traders have moved first, but states are now following, carefully, quietly, and at risk.
South Shaheen is a blog exploring the intersection of infrastructure and geopolitics, with a focus onthe Belt and Road Initiative and regional trade corridors, viewing them as both geopolitical strategies and physical infrastructures transforming communities.**
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