UK, EU slap fresh oil sanctions to ramp up truce pressure on Russia

Brussels, July 18

The European Union and Britain on Friday ramped up pressure on Russia over its war on Ukraine, targeting Moscow’s energy sector, shadow fleet of aging oil tankers and military intelligence service with new sanctions.

“The message is clear: Europe will not back down in its support for Ukraine. The EU will keep raising the pressure until Russia ends its war,” EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said after the bloc agreed its new measures, including a new oil price cap.

Kallas said it was “one of its strongest sanctions packages against Russia to date” linked to the war, now in its fourth year. It comes as European countries start to buy US weapons for Ukraine to help the country better defend itself.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy welcomed the new measures, describing them as a “timely and necessary” step amid intensified Russian attacks.

“All infrastructure of Russia’s war must be blocked,” Zelenskyy said, adding that Ukraine would synchronise its sanctions with the EU and introduce its own additional measures soon.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov brushed off the EU move, saying that they considered such unilateral restrictions unlawful”.

“At the same time, we have acquired certain immunity from sanctions. We have adapted to living under sanctions,” Peskov said in a conference call with reporters. “We will need to analyse the new package in order to minimise negative consequences from it.”

The UK, meanwhile, imposed sanctions on units of Russia’s military intelligence service, GRU. Also added to the list were 18 officers the UK said helped to plan a bomb attack on a theatre in southern Ukraine in 2022 and target the family of a former Russian spy who was later poisoned with a nerve agent.