The Foreign Ministers of the European Union (EU) agreed on Monday to prolong the sanctions imposed on Russia for the invasion of Ukraine After overcoming Hungary reserves, confirmed the high EU representative for foreign and security matters, Kaja Kallas.
The unanimity of the twenty -seven was a necessary step to maintain the restrictive measures that, otherwise, were going to conclude on January 31.
“The EU Foreign Ministers have just agreed to extend the sanctions to Russia again. This will continue depriving Moscow of income to finance their war ”, He indicated in social networks Kallas, who added that Moscow “You must pay for the damage you are causing”
Kallas today presides over a Council of Foreign Community Ministers with Ukraine on the agenda and in which the extension of the restrictive measures to Russia was planned to be approved without debate.
Unanimity is necessary in the EU In sanctions policy and, to try to reach it, the ambassadors of the twenty -seven this morning were reasted again without making progress, so the decision was in the hands of the ministers, according to several diplomatic sources.
They said that Hungary has made a plea about energy security before its community partners and has requested them solidarity and guarantees that oil and gas will continue to flow to their territory, previously supplied by Russian fuels.
On the other hand, Kallas disseminated in parallel a statement prepared alongside the European Commission -What he read today before the ministers- in which he stressed that the energy infrastructure that supplies the Member States is a matter of security for the EU, and called all third countries to respect that principle.
“The Commission and the EU Member States remain fully committed to the continuous support of Ukraine and, in that context, they will help repair, connect and stabilize the energy infrastructure of Ukraine, in which Member States such as Hungary and Slovakia have performed a crucial paper “Kallas underlying.
The European Executive opened the door to integrate Slovakia and Hungary in the dialogue with Ukraine on the gas supply and, in addition, Brussels will ask kyiv guarantees on the maintenance of oil transfers through the Druzhba pipeline.
The Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen asked upon arrival at the Council to extend the restrictive measures against Moscow and stressed that the new US administration of Donald Trump “also sees a massive value in these sanctions and in maintaining the pressure.”
“We want to have peace, but that means we need to have (the Russian president, Vladimir) Putin In the negotiating table, and in order to push it that way, there are two ways: first, to help Ukraine on the battlefield; Second, of course, the sanctions are working, and the Russian economy really does not go very well at this time, ” commented.
Restrictive measures include freezing Russian assets in European territory; In fact, the EU is using the extraordinary returns they produce to finance a credit for the reconstruction and defense of Ukraine, as part of an agreement with the G7.
On Europe, the amount amounts to 18,100 million euros.
The EU has maintained since 2014, when Russia took the Ukrainian Peninsula of Crimea and Sebastopol, sanctions to Moscow that is renewing every six months and has been expanding.
They include both average against personalities and companies.
The EU is currently working on what would be the sixteenth package of sanctions against Russia, which hopes to be ready for the third anniversary of the beginning of the large -scale war against Ukraine at the end of February.
Source: Gestion
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