The fact that most jewellers never bother to find out where their diamonds (and gold) come from, and that Russia produces about 1 third of the world’s diamonds, means that UK jewellers will be buying and selling Russian diamonds over the next few months.

They will be paying for the bullets, tanks and cluster bombs that we can all see being used in the Ukraine. Not because they want to, but because they’ve consistently ignored multiple calls to improve traceability over the course of many years. This will surely damage the industry, dont see how it can’t. And as well as the men women and children in Ukraine, there will be victims in other countries where diamonds are the backbone of economies.

At present, whilst some sanctions have targeted Alrosa, (Belgium lobbied for and got an exemption to protect their diamond industry) there’s nothing stopping the likes of Dubai, Isreal or India from buying blood diamonds from Russia and that’s where they will go. From there they will go to jewellery manufacturers all over the world and then onto retailers and eventually customers.

What customers need to be aware of is that you cant rely on jewellers to be open an honest with you about where their diamonds are from. Even when asked a direct question, they will do their best not to answer it or give a misleading answer. This was the case when we asked Annoushka Jewellery, Brilliance.com and a whole host of other jewellers during our investigation.

What’s more, some will go out of their way to try and preempt tricky questions from customers, as was the case with Stratford Upon-Avon based Jewellers Pragnels.

If you want to buy a diamond but want to be sure it’s not from Russia, then you should be able to expect a straight answer from a company.

The statement above, originally posted on Instagram but now deleted tells several outright porkies as well as subtle attempts to mislead

When you think about it, few businesses

For many years, most jewellers have hid behind the Kimberley Process if anything about conflict diamonds ever comes up. However, this shield already had multiple holes in it and has now been destroyed completely. Some jewellers really can be sure of where their diamonds come from because they have invested in the technology to tell you exactly where they come from, even who has handled and cut them!.

As well as the diamonds that we know come from Russia itself, there have long been reports of the ‘Russian interests’ being involved in atrocities last reported in the original Blood diamond scandal. The notorious Wagner group have been accused of multiple atrocities in the CAR, Mali and Burkina Faso where they operate in conjunction with the governments of these countries in areas with gold and diamond mines.

The jewellery industry really only has itself to blame, ignoring the issues when knew it wouldn’t affect therm

“Nearly nine years after the Kimberley Process was launched, the sad truth is that most consumers still cannot be sure where their diamonds come from, nor whether they are financing armed violence or abusive regimes” said Charmian Gooch, a Founding Director of Global Witness. “The scheme has failed three tests: it failed to deal with the trade in conflict diamonds from Côte d’Ivoire, was unwilling to take serious action in the face of blatant breaches of the rules over a number of years by Venezuela and has proved unwilling to stop diamonds fuelling corruption and violence in Zimbabwe. It has become an accomplice to diamond laundering – whereby dirty diamonds are mixed in with clean gems.”

The Kimberley Process has never stopped