Good morning. U.S. sanctions are forcing the sale of Russia’s flagship oil company in Serbia, loosening Moscow’s grip on a country that has been a historical partner and a base for projecting influence in the Balkans.

• New deal: The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, based in the United Arab Emirates, is in talks to buy Russia’s stake in energy behemoth NIS, according to an official U.S. document seen by The Wall Street Journal. The deal to purchase NIS, which is Serbia’s only oil importer and domestic refiner, could still fall apart.
   
• Wide reach: The sale of NIS is the latest example of the reach of U.S. sanctions. Penalties imposed by the Treasury Department last month forced Lukoil, Russia’s second-biggest oil company, to scramble to shed its foreign holdings. A swift deal with commodities trader Gunvor was rejected by Washington, leaving Lukoil to hunt for alternative buyers.
   
• Pressure on the Kremlin: The sale would come after the U.S. enforced sanctions last month targeting NIS as the Trump administration stepped up pressure on Moscow to end the war in Ukraine. Without the ability to use U.S. dollars, the company has stopped importing oil and its refinery has all but ground to a halt.

Trump’s DEI slayer is just getting started.

As President Trump’s EEOC chair, Andrea Lucas is sharply shifting the agency’s focus to give priority to allegations of religious discrimination. It is bringing lawsuits on behalf of a truck driver who asked to wear a skirt on the job because of her Apostolic Christian beliefs and a ski-area employee fired after writing faith-related social-media posts. And it recently settled with a staffing agency that didn’t hire a Muslim job applicant after he asked for an accommodation to attend Friday prayer.

The 39-year-old Christian conservative has opened investigations into law firms’ diversity practices and universities’ handling of antisemitism. The EEOC asked a judge this week to enforce a subpoena against the University of Pennsylvania. Lucas has said she is attacking the identity politics she believes has permeated workplaces and the broader culture.

Now she has the power to do more.

China and India buying less Russian oil, for now.

Recent sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil have prompted Chinese and Indian businesses to move away from Russian oil, a U.S. Treasury official said, but it remains to be seen whether that lasts, Risk Journal’s Max Fillion reports.

India and China have made up a large portion of Russian energy purchases since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, prompting experts to look at their activity following U.S. sanctions on Russian oil giants Rosneft and Lukoil. The Treasury official said on Thursday that early signs of the effects of the restrictions are encouraging.

• President Trump is restarting attacks on states trying to regulate artificial intelligence, calling for Congress to pre-empt such laws while weighing an executive order that would target states with what he thinks are restrictive regulations.
   
• A Senate committee on Thursday voted to advance President Trump’s nominee to lead the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, an agency many in the cryptocurrency sector hope will become the industry’s primary regulator.

Dragonfly’s annual geopolitical assessment explores the key trends and risks businesses should expect to face in 2026, including major flashpoints for armed conflict, the outlook for rivalry and competition among the great world powers, and the effect elections could have on regional and global security alliances.

To attend the Nov. 27 event at the News Building in London, click here.

China is priming its people and the world for a new pressure campaign on Taiwan.

Mao Zedong once said that China must wield both the pen and the gun against its adversaries. It is a strategy China is now intensifying for Taiwan.

With its so-called pen, China’s state television is preparing the domestic Chinese population for a new phase of pressure against Taiwan. Simultaneously, China’s military signaled its readiness to escalate last weekend, sending four armed China Coast Guard vessels close to an island chain that both Beijing and Tokyo claim as their own.

EU looks to accelerate derisking of critical supply-chain dependencies.

The European Union’s forthcoming Economic Security Doctrine, which outlines the bloc’s approach to trade, technology and geopolitical risks, will focus on reducing dependencies on certain markets and addressing vulnerabilities in critical supply chains, particularly for rare earth elements and semiconductors, according to officials at a European Commission panel discussion in Brussels on Thursday.

Denis Redonnet, the Commission’s deputy director‑general for trade, said the doctrine represents “a change in paradigm” in which policies previously geared toward maximizing economic efficiency now must introduce resilience while ensuring the right trade-off between the two.

• A second large fire broke out Thursday morning at a key aluminum supplier to Ford. A Sept. 16 fire at the plant reduced production of F-150 pickups and other models. Thursday’s fire appears to be in the same area of the plant, said people familiar with the matter.
   
• A senior Pentagon official outlined a framework for a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine to President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on Thursday, part of the Trump administration’s multipronged effort to restart talks on ending the war.

• A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention webpage that previously made the case that vaccines don’t cause autism now says they might.
   
• Federal investigators probing the crash of a United Parcel Service cargo jet that killed 14 people in Louisville, Ky., earlier this month found signs of metal fatigue and stress in hardware that connected an engine to the plane, according to a preliminary accident report published Thursday.
   
• President Trump called for the arrest of Democratic lawmakers who appeared in a video calling for members of the U.S. military to disobey illegal orders.
   
• Former President George W. Bush hailed Dick Cheney as a loyal, steadying force, “sparing and measured with words in a profession that attracts talkers,” during a service Thursday for the late vice president, who died Nov. 3 at age 84.

Corrections & Amplifications: The number of enforcement actions taken by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission against public companies and subsidiaries in fiscal year 2025 was 56, according to a new report by consulting firm Cornerstone Research and the New York University Pollack Center for Law & Business. Yesterday’s Morning Risk Report incorrectly said it was 52.

Follow us on X at @WSJRisk. Send tips to our reporters Max Fillion at max.fillion@dowjones.com, Mengqi Sun at mengqi.sun@wsj.com and Richard Vanderford at richard.vanderford@wsj.com.

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