EU and Canada introduce new sanctions against Russia News
© WikiMedia (Jose Huwaidi)
EU and Canada introduce new sanctions against Russia

In a Special Meeting of the European Council Tuesday the European Union (EU) instituted a 90% ban on Russian oil imports. The new sanctions are part of the EU’s Versailles Declaration, which aims to cripple Russia’s financial support for the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

The EU did not include Hungary in the ban after pressure from Hungarian President Viktor Orban. Hungary is dependent on Russian oil imports via the Friendship Pipeline from Russia to Hungary, which travels through Ukraine. Orban celebrated the removal of Hungary from the agreement saying “Hungarian families can sleep peacefully tonight.”

The EU announcement was quickly followed by another from GasTerra, the Dutch state oil and gas company, saying it would stop receiving Russian oil entirely, taking the sanctions one step further.

It is unclear how the EU’s new sanctions and GasTerra’s ban on Russian oil imports will affect the energy economy in Europe. A study from the EU found that over half of European coal imports and 43% of natural gas were imported from Russia.

Canada also updated its Russian sanctions Tuesday, adding 22 more individuals and four organizations to its sanctions list. The new sanctions include “senior officials of Russian financial institutions and their family members, as well as key financial institutions and banks.” Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly stated “[f]or every action taken by President Putin to undermine Ukraine’s territorial integrity, Canada will not hesitate to take appropriate countermeasures. Canada will relentlessly pursue accountability for the Russian regime’s unjustifiable acts. We stand with Ukraine and its people.”

This now brings the total number of sanctioned individuals and organizations in Canada to over 1,500 since the initial annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014.