New Delhi, June 10 -- The European Union's chief diplomat arrived in Ireland on Tuesday carrying one of the more awkward questions in the bloc's sanctions arsenal: why Europe's largest alumina refinery, owned by a Russian conglomerate and sitting on the Shannon estuary, is still shipping nearly half its output to Russia in the fifth year of the confrontation that sanctions were supposed to decide.

it's important, she said, that we get the facts straight.

The facts, as assembled by investigators and the company's own disclosures, are striking. Aughinish, acquired in 2007 by Rusal, the aluminium empire built by the Kremlin-connected billionaire Oleg Deripaska, sent roughly 45 percent of its sales to Russia in 2025 and expects the same thi...