EU joins US in heaping more sanctions on Russia to push Putin into Ukraine peace talks

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BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union on Thursday heaped more economic sanctions on Russia, adding to U.S. President Donald Trump’s new punitive measures the previous day against the Russian oil industry. Russian officials and state media dismissed the Western measures, claiming they are largely ineffective.

The sanctions are intended as part of a broadened effort to choke off the revenue and supplies that fuel Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and compel President Vladimir Putin to negotiate an end to the war.

The measures are a triumph for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has long campaigned for the international community to punish Russia more comprehensively for attacking his country.

“We waited for this. God bless, it will work. And this is very important,” the Ukrainian leader said in Brussels, where EU countries attending a summit announced the latest round of Russia sanctions.

Despite U.S.-led peace efforts in recent months, the war shows no sign of ending after more than three years of fighting, and European leaders are increasingly concerned about the threat from Russia.

Ukrainian forces have largely held Russia’s bigger army at bay in a slow and ruinous war of attrition along a roughly 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line that snakes along eastern and southern Ukraine. Almost daily Russian long-range strikes have taken aim at Ukraine’s power grid ahead of the bitter winter, while Ukrainian forces have targeted Russian oil refineries and manufacturing plants.

Energy revenue is the linchpin of Russia’s economy, allowing Putin to pour money into the armed forces without worsening inflation and avoiding a currency collapse.

The EU measures especially target Russian oil and gas. They ban imports of Russian liquefied natural gas into the bloc, and add port bans on more than 100 new ships in the Russian shadow fleet of hundreds of aging tankers that are dodging sanctions. The latest sanctions bring the total number of such ships to be banned to 557.

The measures also target transactions with a cryptocurrency increasingly used by Russia to circumvent sanctions; prohibit operations in the bloc using Russian payment cards and systems; restrict the provision of AI services and high-performance computing services to Russian entities; and widen an export ban to include electronic components, chemicals and metals used in military manufacturing.

A new system for limiting the movement of Russian diplomats within the 27-nation EU will also be introduced.

Zelenskyy urged more nations to punish Russia. “This is a good signal to other countries in the world to join the sanctions,” he told reporters in Brussels.

International crude prices jumped more than $2 per barrel Thursday on news of the additional sanctions.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova described the new U.S. sanctions as “entirely counterproductive, including in terms of signaling in favor or achieving a meaningful negotiated solution to the Ukrainian conflict.”

“If the current U.S. administration follows the example of its predecessors, who attempted to coerce or force Russia into sacrificing its national interests through unlawful sanctions, the result will be exactly the same — disastrous from a domestic political standpoint and detrimental to the stability of the global economy,” Zakharova said.

State-run and pro-Kremlin Russian media mostly shrugged at the news.

“Pressure or no pressure, it won’t make things any sweeter for Zelenskyy. And what’s more, it won’t bring peace any closer,” Komsomolskaya Pravda, a popular pro-Kremlin tabloid, said.

Russian state news agency RIA Novosti said in a column that the new sanctions were “painful, as usual, but not deadly. Also as usual.”

The effectiveness of economic sanctions in forcing Putin’s hand is questionable, analysts say. Russia’s economy has so far proved resilient, although it is showing signs of strain.

Senior officials in Europe and the United States have debated for months over how best to crank up pressure on the Kremlin.

The new EU measures took almost a month to decide. The 27-nation bloc has already slapped 18 packages of sanctions against Russia over the war, but getting final agreement on whom and what to target can take weeks. Moscow has also proved adept at sidestepping sanctions.

The U.S. sanctions against Russian oil giants Rosneft and Lukoil came after Trump said that his plan for a swift meeting with Putin was on hold because he didn’t want it to be a “waste of time.” It was the latest twist in Trump’s hot-and-cold efforts to end the war as Putin refuses to budge from his demands.

In what appeared to be a public reminder of Russian atomic arsenals, Putin on Wednesday directed drills of the country’s strategic nuclear forces.

The two sides continued to pummel each other with strikes overnight.

In a village in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region, Russia conducted a so-called double-tap drone strike, hitting the same place a second time when first responders arrived at the scene of the first strike, regional head Oleh Syniehubov said. One emergency worker was killed and five of his colleagues were injured, Syniehubov said.

Russian drones also attacked three districts of Kyiv, injuring eight people, according to city’s prosecutor’s office.

The Russian Defense Ministry, meanwhile, reported intercepting and destroying 139 Ukrainian drones over Russian regions and the annexed Crimean peninsula overnight.

It did not comment on unconfirmed reports that Ukrainian drones hit another oil refinery and an unspecified energy facility.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine