EU adopts new Russia sanctions amid Ukraine ceasefire push

Foreign ministers formally adopted the EU’s 17th package of sanctions and also called on the United States to mount more pressure on Russia if Moscow doesn’t agree on a ceasefire.

The bloc’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas announced at a meeting of foreign and defense ministers in Brussels that the new measures target the nearly 200 ships of Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet” used to help Russia evade oil sales restrictions, and are often dilapidated, uninsured, with unclear ownership.

“The longer Russia wages war, the tougher our response,” she added.

According to a report by Deutsche Welle, the adoption of UE’s positions came after Donald Trump’s phine talks with Vladimir Putin failed to exact any compromise from the Russian despot who demands that Ukraine cedes more territories in return for peace.

President Donald Trump had declared after his talk with Putin that Ukraine-Russia ceasefire talks would begin “immediately,” but expected compromises from the warring countries are nowhere in sight as Kyiv rejects any withdrawal of its forces from its territory forcibly annexed by Russia.

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas on Tuesday said that another package of sanctions is also in the works. He called for “consequences” from Washington if Moscow “doesn’t agree on an unconditional ceasefire.”

“America said that if Russia doesn’t agree on an unconditional ceasefire, then there are going to be consequences. So we want to see those consequences, also from the US side,” Kallas said.

“We continue on working on the next strong package of sanctions to put more pressure on Russia so that they would also want peace,” Kallas said.

“There are sanctions regarding the oil price cap, energy, also banking sector — the sanctions that will hurt Russia’s economy.”

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said Tuesday that he does not believe Russian President Vladimir Putin is “genuinely interested in peace.”

“He is still not ready for concessions, only talks about a ceasefire under his conditions,” Pistorius said on the sidelines of the meeting in Brussels. He added that Putin is only “playing for time,” in teasing openness towards talks on ending Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The frequency of attacks on Ukrainian cities says more than Putin’s “lip service” towards peace talks, Pistorius said.

The Oracle Today reports that the sanctions are up on the table after Putin stated that who added more “compromises” were still needed for Moscow to be “ready to work” with the Ukrainians on a “memorandum on a possible future peace agreement defining a range of positions.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who spoke with Trump both before and after the Putin call, has said he is open to further talks with Moscow, but has rejected demands to withdraw troops from four regions partially occupied by Russia in the south and east of Ukraine.

“If Russia makes it a condition that our troops withdraw from our country, that means they do not want a ceasefire or an end to the war,” Zelenskyy said on Monday.

Before taking office in January, Trump vowed to bring the war to a swift end by engaging directly with Putin, a goal which has proven elusive as the Russian leader has rejected previous proposals for a 30-day ceasefire.

In February, after talking with Putin, Trump had also said peace talks were to commence “immediately.” Since then, Russia has instead stepped up its attacks on Ukrainian cities.

After initial US-Russia talks in February that left out Ukrainian and European negotiators, the Trump administration has shown more willingness to work multilaterally, even if it has indicated it would back out of brokering peace if a solution is not found quickly.