Russian oil exports have rebounded to rates previously seen before the nation’s invasion of Ukraine despite sanctions imposed by Western countries.

G7 nations, the European Union, and Australia implemented a $60 per barrel price cap on Russian oil so that their maritime services industries, such as insurance and trade finance, can only offer their services for Russian oil sold below the benchmark. Russian oil exports in March nevertheless soared to the highest levels since April 2020 due to “surging product flows that returned to levels last seen before Russia invaded Ukraine,” according to a monthly oil market report from the International Energy Agency.

Revenues from Russian oil exports meanwhile increased $1 billion last month to reach $12.7 billion, a metric which is still 43% lower than one year ago. The Russian government depends upon revenues from the energy sector to fill its coffers.

To avoid the price cap, Russia must depend upon maritime service industries outside of the G7, which are generally more expensive and less reliable.

The effort from Western nations to limit the Russian oil market has been resisted by countries that prioritize cheaper and more reliable sources of energy. China witnessed a 43% year-over-year increase in Russian oil imports as of two months ago, according to an analysis from S&P Global, which noted that China is willing to “snap up attractively priced crudes” shunned by Western nations. Russian economic actors now use the Chinese yuan more than the dollar as the two nations increase their trade cooperation.

Japan, a member of the G7, will likewise continue to purchase crude oil from a project in the far eastern portion of Russia such that the energy-poor island nation will continue to have access to the natural gas present at the site. “We have done this with an eye toward having a stable supply of energy for Japan,” an official from the Japanese economy ministry said earlier this month in a statement.

Japan has been more hesitant than other G7 nations to express wholehearted support for Ukraine given their dependence on Russian energy. The nation provides roughly one-tenth of Japanese natural gas imports; Germany, which depended on Russia for more than half of natural gas imports before the invasion began early last year, rushed to secure other power sources as the cost of electricity soared more than tenfold last fall.

The International Energy Agency noted that a surprise oil production decrease from OPEC, an economic bloc constituting Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and other countries with a large share of global oil production, will risk “aggravating an expected oil supply deficit” in the second half of 2023 and “boosting oil prices at a time of heightened economic uncertainty, even as industrial activity slows in the world’s largest economies.”

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President Joe Biden has meanwhile earned criticism for approving the release of 180 million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a stock of emergency crude oil created to manage supply disruptions in energy markets, depleting the reservoir even as the costs to refill the stores are now elevated. He also moved last year to enable American oil production in Venezuela and reportedly asked Saudi Arabia to delay oil production cuts until after the midterm elections.

Documents leaked online show that China has targeted the United States and other countries with up to four other spy balloons, according to a new report. 

Several of the documents that were posted in a Discord channel, allegedly by 21-year-old Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira, show that China has repeatedly used spy balloons around the world, according to a report from the Washington Post. 

One of the additional spy balloons detailed in the document flew over a U.S. carrier strike group with no confrontation, while another balloon crashed into the South China Sea. Information on when these incidents occurred is not certain. 

The documents also reveal new information about the technological capabilities of the widely known spy balloon, known as Killeen-23, that was shot down over the Atlantic in February after passing over much of the continental United States. Details from three balloons are discussed in a document from February 15, just days after Killeen-23 was shot down, by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). In addition to Killeen-23, the other two balloons are known as Bulger-21 and Accardo-21. 

According to the document, Bulger-21 traveled around the world from December 2021 until May 2022 armed with surveillance equipment. It reportedly had a “full motion video payload with a capability to zoom.”

The Post reported that the documents also appear to link Bulger-21 with the Eagles Men Aviation Science and Technology Group, a company sanctioned in connection to the spy balloon incident earlier this year. 

The documents show that Killeen-23 could generate about 10,000 watts of solar power, meaning that it could have operated a synthetic aperture radar giving it the ability to generate images during the night and see through thin layers, according to The Post. 

However, the NGA document also shows that U.S. intelligence did not have a full understanding of Killeen-23. For example, one of the documents says that U.S. analysts had “no imagery collections of the bottom of the Killeen-23 payload to analyze for an optical sensor.”

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This shows that the U.S. did not have an understanding of what exactly the spy balloon was able to survey, but still decided to let it fly all the way from Montana to the coast of South Carolina. 

The documents were from the trove of documents allegedly leaked by Teixeira, who was arrested earlier this week in Massachusetts. Other leaked documents contain information relating to the Russia-Ukraine War, including suggestions that the U.S. believes the war could go on significantly longer.