Britain just sanctioned every major Russian oil company and blocked most of its output

Britain just sanctioned 38 Russian energy companies, shadow fleet tankers and financial networks.

And it's the first G7 country to hit all four of Russia's biggest oil companies at once.

The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office announced it a few hours ago.

So how much of Russia's oil does this actually cover? More than 90%.

Here's how we got there. Britain had already sanctioned Rosneft and Lukoil in earlier rounds. This package adds two more, Zarubezhneft and INK Capital. That's all four of Russia's biggest oil producers now under British sanctions. No other G7 country has done that.

Then there's the ships. A further 12 oil tankers just got sanctioned. That takes Britain's total to more than 600 shadow fleet vessels. These are the ships Russia uses to move oil around Western sanctions. The government says a lot of them are over 20 years old, use deceptive shipping tricks and sail under false flags.

And the package goes after the money too. Three crypto exchanges and two payment platforms just got sanctioned. Three of them are linked to Kyrgyzstan.

Two of those platforms are accused of processing transactions for Russia's A7 payment network. That's a Kremlin-backed system built to move money around sanctions.

So how big is that network? It says it moved more than $90 billion last year. That's roughly half of Russia's entire annual military budget.

But here's a separate number, and it's not the same claim. A US Treasury crackdown on that same network found its sub-agents had handled over $17 billion worldwide, between the start of last year and the middle of this one. Two different figures, from two different investigations. Don't mix them up.

Then there's the hardware side. 17 more entities and individuals just got sanctioned for supplying Russia with what the UK, US and EU jointly call Common High Priority goods. That means machine tools, electronics and materials used to build ballistic missiles and drones.