In a testament to the success of the latest Trump sanctions against Russia, overnight Russian aluminum giant Rusal announced that its chief executive, Aleksandra Buriko, and half of its managerial board resigned to make sure the firm avoids U.S. sanctions against its founder, billionaire oligarch, Oleg Deripaska. The mass resignations were part of “the efforts that have been made by the management of the group to protect the interests of the company and its shareholders” since the sanctions were imposed last month, Rusal said in a May 24 statement.

Buriko resigned after the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced new punitive measures against Russia in early April in response to Russia’s “malign” activities around the world. The latest round of sanctions primarily targeted Russian oligarchs close to President Vladimir Putin, especially Oleg Deripaska – who had previously been interviewed by Robert Mueller – prompting Rusal shares to tumble while the price of aluminum soared.

That said, Rusal is not out of the woods yet, and earlier today Bloomberg reported that Deripaska had asked the Russian government to buy aluminum for state reserves, in other words engage in an indirect bailout of the state’s largest aluminum producer, although the Kremlin hasn’t made a decision yet. Furthermore, Rusal which is facing significant debt maturities in the coming months, has applied for state support to Promsvyazbank, and a decision is pending.

The common theme here is that Trump’s sanctions against Russia – with which he is supposedly colluding – not only work, but are very effective in achieving their goal. And they do so though the biggest weapon the US has: access to the world’s reserve currency, because with one phone call to SWIFT, Trump can lock out an entire nation.

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