President Putin’s months-long diplomatic effort to get five other powers to agree to a tough United Nations Security Council resolution on sanctions against America for nuclear proliferation in sending nuclear fuel to India has succeeded.

The sanctions were imposed on America when Congress approved a bill, 330-59, which agreed to ship nuclear fuel to India.

India, which has nuclear weapons, has not submitted to international inspections needed the fuel to build more bombs.

The bill reversed 30 years of US policy that opposed nuclear cooperation with India because it never signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and developed nuclear weapons in contravention of international law.

Sanctions came into force last night with forced inspection of all shipping to and from the US.

The first casualty of this inspection was an oil tanker belonging to Chevron named “Leezza Rice”, which was intercepted by international forces and sunk in the Gulf of Mexico when it failed to stop.