Ukraine calls for oil sanctions against Russia while prices fall
The Yermak-McFaul Sanctions Group has released its fourth Action Plan to strengthen sanctions against Russia. The 39-page document, published on the website of the President of Ukraine, proposes to strike first at Russia's oil industry.
"At present, tensions in the oil and gas markets are decreasing due to an increase in supply and a slowdown in economic growth, which puts Russia in a more vulnerable position due to low energy prices. It was low oil prices that caused economic downturns and crises in Russia during the 1990s, especially in 1998, as well as in 2008, 2014, and 2020. Now there is an opportunity to take advantage of this vulnerability to contain Russia, while ending Europe's energy dependence on a strategic adversary," the document says.
Other proposed measures include:
→ lowering the price ceiling for Russian oil and heavy oil products by $15 per barrel (to $45 and $30 respectively), and for light oil products by $25 per barrel (to $75);
→ imposing a duty on imports of Russian oil, gas and fertilizers into the European Union. The money could be used to finance the infrastructure needed for Hungary and Slovakia to switch away from Russian energy;
→ a complete ban on Russian liquefied natural gas imports to Europe, including supplies from the Yamal LNG project. Depending on the situation on the gas market, this could be done as early as November 1, 2025 or later (January 1, 2026 or April 1, 2026);
→ confiscation of Russia's frozen sovereign assets abroad;
→ increased restrictions on Russia's access to critical Western technologies and components;
→ sanctions against all enterprises and subsidiaries of the Russian military-industrial complex, including Roscosmos and Rosatom;
→ introduction of quotas on exports of goods and services for intermediary countries (Turkey, UAE, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan), quotas should be tied to the indicators of 2021;
→ sanctions against domestic Internet infrastructure providers in Russia (Yandex Cloud, Rostelecom, IXcellerate, Cloud. ru) and termination of indirect access to cloud services (AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud).
Separately, the group, like last year, proposes to create an international organization, similar to the Coordinating Committee on Multilateral Export Controls (CoCom) that existed during the Cold War, to enforce the ban on exports of critical technologies to Russia.
According to the members of the working group, the European Union should take the lead in sanctions policy.
"Europe has significant leverage over Russia, in particular as the largest buyer of Russian gas, the main supplier of transportation and insurance services for the Russian oil fleet, and as the depositary of the vast majority of the $300 billion in frozen reserves of the Central Bank of Russia. Europe should now use these levers of influence and take a leading role in increasing pressure on Russia and providing more support to Ukraine," the document says.
On May 6, it became known that the European Commission had prepared a "simple" 17th package of sanctions against Russia. It provides for the expansion of the sanctions lists, but there will be no breakthrough decisions.
