Russia: According to European Union’s biggest member Germany, the EU will likely agree on an ‘oil embargo’ within days. Moscow recently said that it saw its economic relations with China as it faced isolation from the west over its invasion of Ukraine.
On Monday, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky told global business leaders in Davos that the world must increase sanctions against Russia to discourage other countries that want to wage wars from using brute force to achieve their arms.
“The sanctions should be maximum so that Russia — and every other potential aggressor who wants to wage a brutal war against its neighbour — clearly knows the immediate consequences of their actions,” he said.
Many of the European members are reliant on Russian energy, which has gained a lot of criticism from other nations and from Kyiv itself, as they say that the bloc is not doing enough to halt the supplies.
Hungary, on the other hand, struck a demand for energy investments before it agreed on the oil embargo The EU has offered up to 2 billion euros ($2.14bn) to central and eastern nations lacking non-Russian supply. (source- al Jazeera)
Hungarian President Victor Orban, last Friday blamed EU head, Ursula, for attacking the unity of the EU by proposing a ban on Russian oil, saying it crosses the red line.
“The European Commission president, intentionally or unintentionally, has attacked the European unity that had been worked out. From the first moment, we made clear that there will be a red line… they have crossed this red line,” he announced on the state radio.
Germany’s economic minister Robert Habeck told broadcaster ZDF that they will reach a breakthrough ‘within days’. “The European Commission and United States were working in parallel on a proposal to cap global oil prices,” he added further. “It is obviously an unusual measure, but these are unusual times”
On February 24, Russia dispatched tens of thousands of troops to Ukraine for a “special operation” to demilitarise the country and weed out dangerous nationalists, statements derided by Kyiv and Western countries as bogus pretexts for a land grab.
Russian military have taken control of a huge area of eastern and southern Ukraine after capturing the port city of Mariupol in southeastern Ukraine last week after a months-long siege.
They are attempting to encircle Ukrainian soldiers and entirely conquer the provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk, which make up the eastern Donbas region and are backed by Russia.
