Photo: Ronald Wittek / EPA
Kaja Kallas, the EU’s chief foreign policy diplomat, has announced a 19th package of sanctions against Russia targeting banks and crypto exchanges as well as entities in India and China.
Writing on X, Kallas said the sanctions would make it “increasingly harder” for Vladimir Putin to fund the ongoing war in Ukraine.
According to Reuters, this new package of sanctions also includes a ban on the import of Russian liquified natural gas (LNG). These restrictions will be rolled out in two stages, with short term contracts annulled after six months and long term contracts cancelled on 1 January 2027.
The sanctions also target Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet” of ships, singling out an additional 117 vessels used by Moscow to bypass international sanctions on Russian oil and petroleum product exports. The new sanctions bring the total number of Russia-linked vessels subject to an EU port access ban to 557.
Additionally, new restrictions on the ability of Russian diplomats to move freely on EU territory are being introduced.
The EU’s measures follow an earlier announcement by the US Treasury that it too is taking action against the Kremlin, sanctioning Russia’s key energy companies Rosneft and Lukoil. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the measures were a response to Vladimir Putin’s “refusal to end this senseless war”, and that the Treasury would take “further action if necessary” to force Russia to engage in peace talks in good faith.
The move aims to stifle Moscow’s ability to generate revenue for its war effort through the sale of oil abroad, something labelled by former Treasury official Eddie Fishman as “the lifeblood of Putin’s economy”.
The move represents the latest in a series of setbacks for Moscow, with US President Donald Trump announcing shortly afterwards that a planned summit with Putin in Budapest would now not take place. “It just didn’t feel right to me”, Trump said, adding that “it didn’t feel like we were going to get to the place we have to get, so I cancelled it”.
