Ray Furlong and Rikard Jozwiak
(RFE/RL) — With the ink still drying on the European Union’s freshly printed 17th sanctions package on Russia, work is already underway on a next step that European leaders say will be “massive.”
But some analysts warn that, in many ways, the EU has already used its best cards and doesn’t have many left in its hand, especially at a time when Washington seems reluctant to join in as it pushes peace talks between Kyiv and Moscow.
“The cards that we still have to play largely include measures for which we would need the United States,” Benjamin Hilgenstock, Senior Economist at the Kyiv-based KSE Institute, a think tank, told RFE/RL.
“Specifically, this would be about removing Russian oil and gas from global markets in volume,” he said, adding that counties such as India, China, and Turkey would not stop buying Russian fossil fuels without the weight of secondary US sanctions.
European leaders threatened Russia with “massive” sanctions on May 10 if Moscow did not agree to a 30-day cease-fire proposed by Washington. They said they were making their demand after coordinating it with US President Donald Trump.
It was meant to appear as a game-changing moment, but the apparent transatlantic concord quickly went awry.
Russian President Vladimir Putin did not commit to a cease-fire during a phone callwith Trump on May 19, yet Trump praised the call and did not appear ready to announce new US sanctions saying imposing them now could imperil talks and make the situation “much worse.”
To be clear: the “massive” sanction threat was nothing to do with the 17th package of EU measures announced on May 20, as this had already been some time in the works.
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