Brussels: The European Union on Thursday heaped more economic sanctions on Russia, adding to US President Donald Trump’s new punitive measures the previous day against the Russian oil industry. Russian officials and state media dismissed the Western measures, saying they are largely ineffective.
The sanctions are intended as part of a broadened effort to choke off the revenue and supplies that fuel Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and compel Russian President Vladimir Putin to negotiate an end to the war.
The measures are a triumph for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has long campaigned for the international community to punish Russia more comprehensively for attacking his country.
“We waited for this. God bless, it will work. And this is very important,” Zelenskyy said in Brussels, where EU countries attending a summit announced the latest round of Russia sanctions.
Despite US-led peace efforts in recent months, the war shows no sign of ending after nearly four years, and European leaders are increasingly concerned about the threat from Russia.
Ukrainian forces have largely held Russia’s bigger army at bay in a slow and ruinous war of attrition along a roughly 1,000-kilometre (600-mile) front line that snakes along eastern and southern Ukraine. Almost daily, Russian long-range strikes have taken aim at Ukraine’s power grid before the bitter winter, while Ukrainian forces have targeted Russian oil refineries and manufacturing plants.
Energy revenue is the linchpin of Russia’s economy, allowing Putin to pour money into the armed forces without worsening inflation and avoiding a currency collapse.
The EU measures especially target Russian oil and gas. They ban imports of Russian liquefied natural gas into the bloc, and add port bans on more than 100 new ships in the Russian shadow fleet of hundreds of ageing tankers that are dodging sanctions. The latest sanctions bring the total number of such ships to be banned to 557.
The measures also target transactions with a cryptocurrency increasingly used by Russia to circumvent sanctions; prohibit operations in the bloc using Russian payment cards and systems; restrict the provision of artificial intelligence services and high-performance computing services to Russian entities; and widen an export ban to include electronic components, chemicals and metals used in military manufacturing.
A new system for limiting the movement of Russian diplomats within the 27-nation EU will also be introduced.