Helsinki (Brussels Morning Newspaper) – Finland’s Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen praised recent American and European Union sanctions on Russia’s energy sector but emphasised that additional pressure is necessary to compel Moscow to cease its war in Ukraine.
Valtonen made these comments during the ASEAN summit in Malaysia, where Finland is joining the group’s main treaty, marking a move to strengthen relations with the region, Bloomberg reported.
This week, the global oil market was shaken by a series of US sanctions targeting Russia’s two biggest producers. On the same day, European Union leaders also approved their 19th package of sanctions against Russia targeting LNG imports.
“The step that the United States took the other day in lockstep with Europe to strengthen the sanctions against Russia is so important,”
Valtonen said. However,
“we simply have to increase the pressure.”
“Unfortunately, we seem to be unable to change Russia’s imperialistic goals, but we should be able to change their calculus,”
she said.
“At the end of the day, a war costs a lot of money and we already now see that the Russian real economy is really able to carry this weight.”
What sanctions has the US imposed on Russia?
US President Donald Trump has introduced sanctions on Russia for the first time since he returned to the White House, citing insufficient progress in ceasefire negotiations to end Moscow’s war on Ukraine.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated that the sanctions would focus on Russia’s two biggest oil firms, Lukoil and Rosneft.
The Department of the Treasury’s actions, which included sanctions against many Rosneft and Lukoil subsidiaries, block their US assets and prohibit the US from conducting business with them. Notably, Chinese and Indian buyers of Russian oil were not included in the US sanctions.
What measures are included in the EU’s 19th sanctions package?
Meanwhile, on the same day, the EU announced it had approved its 19th sanctions package against Moscow, which includes a ban on Russian liquefied natural gas imports.
“We are very pleased to announce that we have just been notified by the remaining member state that it’s now able to lift its reservation on the 19th sanctions package,”
the Danish rotating presidency of the EU said in a statement.
The EU sanctions also impose new travel bans on Russian diplomats and now include 117 additional vessels from Moscow’s covert fleet of sanctions-avoidance ships, increasing the total to 558, along with banks in Kazakhstan and Belarus.
