Alrosa Official Mocks "Ineffective" G7 Diamond Sanctions
April 23, 25
(IDEX Online) - Attempts by the G7 nations to sanction Russian diamonds are "ineffective," says Alrosa, because they're still not backed by traceability technology.
Pyotr Karakchiyev (pictured), head of the international cooperation department at the state-controlled miner, also claimed no other country was able to offer the same rough assortment as Russia.
"The sanctions that our adversaries dreamed up were supposed to affect us in a big way but they are not achieving the necessary effect, at least for them," he told delegates at the Khozaktiv-2025 corporate forum, in Astana, Kazakhstan, earlier this month, according to the independent Interfax news agency.
"Tracing is one of the key conditions that the G7 wanted to bring in to stop Russian gemstones from entering Western markets. This is not working now. There is no technical solution."
The G7 nations (including the EU) first sanctioned Russian diamonds in January 2024, with a pledge to introduce traceability technology in September of that year.
But in June 2024 it was put back to March 2025, and subsequently to January 2026, a move that was broadly welcomed by the diamond industry, worried that the introduction would otherwise be rushed and poorly planned.
Karakchiyev mocked the US and EU in his address, saying their officials had little understanding of the industry, or of how to impose a unified set of sanctions on Russia