TO THE immense surprise of absolutely nobody, Donald Trump didn’t deliver on his promise to fix the Ukraine conflict on day one of his 2.0 administration.

But five weeks into the second term, the outlines of a possible settlement are hazily visible. To many eyes, it is not a pleasing sight.

President Zelenskyy — ludicrously branded a “dictator” by a man who attempted a coup rather than accept the result of an election — is being shamefully bullied into accepting a blatantly plunderous minerals deal on gun-to-the-head terms grossly disadvantageous to his country.

President Putin — clearly the aggressor in this situation, Trump’s aspersions to the contrary notwithstanding — stands to come out of his military misadventure in possession of around 20% of Ukrainian territory.

Many of America’s traditional allies are appalled at the prospect, even if their leaders feel constrained not to make too much fuss and meekly pitch up at the White House to layer obsequious praise on Trump’s diplomatic sagacity instead.

The UK, Canada and the EU remain solidly in Kiev’s corner, demonstrating that position on Monday when they issued the latest iterations of shipping-related sanctions regimes directed against Russia.

Given that Britain accounts for just 2.2% of world GDP, and Canada still less, this is nothing the Kremlin cannot handle. The 27-member EU has a 15.2% slice, which is obviously weightier, but hardly decisive.

The cornerstone of their restrictions is an oil price cap mechanism that comes with an intrinsic design flaw. The very effort to stifle Russian crude exports without stifling Russian crude exports is logically self-defeating.

Essentially, Russia continues to sell as much oil as it wants to willing buyers, and there isn’t a damn thing London, Ottawa and Brussels can do about it, even in cahoots.

If these are “smart sanctions”, they don’t appear to be working any better than the good old fashioned stupid ones.

Yet what was once bread-and-butter business for tanker operators and marine insurers is now a source of lucre for an unregulated and dubiously insured dark fleet*.

What is noticeable is that the latest packages give up any pretence of enforcing the cap and are directed against high-risk shipping practices instead.

The declaration of intent is entirely admirable. The practicalities are something else. If you have banned ships coming to your ports, they are outwith the remit of your port state control inspectorate.

It’s all very well contacting tankers transiting the English Channel ex-Ust-Luga on marine VHF and politely enquiring in a home counties accent as to the adequacy of their insurance standing. It’s just there is no way to ascertain the truth of any reply.

Newly issued threats to punish any entity deemed to be assisting the shadow fleet will ramp up costly compliance efforts for legitimate operators to prove they are not doing so.

The hole-in-the-corner squad, which actually is doing so, will always be able to find another hole in a different corner.

Washington, meanwhile, is turning on other targets. The sanctions exemptions that allowed Chevron to continue operating in Venezuela have this week been revoked.

There is also a renewed focus on Iran, with a renewed “maximum pressure 2.0” campaign designed to eliminate Iranian crude exports altogether.

Liquified petroleum gas is also in Trump’s crosshairs, and as Lloyd’s List reported this week, there are signs of a crackdown the 100 or so LPG carriers that have been lifting billions of dollars’ worth of Iranian butane and propane.

Trump has openly flagged the prospect of easing sanctions on Russia as an incentive to reach a peace deal with Ukraine. In many instances, it would be within his gift to do so simply by appending his oversize signature to an executive order.

Our industry is facing with the unappetising scenario of seeing ships regulated by multiple — and perhaps even directly contradictory — sanctions regimes. That is a recipe for paralysis.

Heavyweight foreign affairs commentators in heavyweight publications have looked askance at recent developments in international politics, penning portentous essays with titles such as “the week that changed everything”.

Some of them even are even asking whether it is any longer meaningful to talk about “the West” in the way the term has been used since the Cold War.

That is a real question and let us not fool ourselves that shipping’s imperatives are at the forefront of political deliberations in the capitals of major powers right now.

But a coherent rulebook should not be too much for which to ask.

* Lloyd’s List defines a tanker as part of the dark fleet if it is aged 15 years or over, anonymously owned and/or has a corporate structure designed to obfuscate beneficial ownership discovery, solely deployed in sanctioned oil trades, and engaged in one or more of the deceptive shipping practices outlined in US State Department guidance issued in May 2020. The figures exclude tankers tracked to government-controlled shipping entities such as Russia’s Sovcomflot, or Iran’s National Iranian Tanker Co, and those already sanctioned.