Ukraine pressures EU to step up Russian sanctions as Brussels mulls new plans

Ukraine is putting pressure on the EU to include not just an oil price cap, but also an embargo on Russian gas in its next sanctions package.

“While you are counting pennies, we are counting lives,” Oleg Ustenko, economic adviser of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, told POLITICO.

EU ambassadors will discuss Ukraine at their meeting on Wednesday, and the European Commission’s proposal for the next slate of penalties isn’t expected until later this week. The focus will be on a price-capping mechanism for Russian oil exports, as agreed by G7 countries. The EU and the U.S. hope to have that mechanism in place by December 5, when EU sanctions banning seaborne imports of Russian crude come into force, according to diplomats.

Ukraine wants the EU to go further, especially after Russian President Vladimir Putin last week announced a partial mobilization of reservists and made nuclear threats.

“Those messages completely changed the situation,” said Ustenko, urging the EU to make progress on sanctions and to hit the Kremlin’s war chest. “If the West continues buying Russian fossil fuels, it means the war in Ukraine is just prolonged.”

Ideally, the oil price cap and the oil embargo would be put in place immediately, Ustenko said. But the most important thing is for the new sanctions package to pass and to include a ban on insuring ships transporting Russian oil in both the EU and the U.K., he said. This is sensitive, particularly among Mediterranean islands like Cyprus.

Brussels should also include sanctions against Russia’s nuclear industry and Russian gas in this package, Ustenko said, especially after Putin’s recent threats. “You have enough gas in Europe now to go through this winter with almost no losses,” he said.

Jacopo Barigazzi, Paola Tamma and Ilya Gridneff contributed reporting.