The feeling that Vladimir Putin has teased everyone with his proposal to negotiate with Ukraine and then send a low -level delegation to Turkey that accepted proposals considered insufficient by Europe quickly spread this Friday from Istanbul to Tirana. From the capital of Albania, where the sixth meeting of the European political community was held, the main leaders of the continent involved in the peace efforts under American impulse claimed a tightening of the pressure on Moscow to force the Russian president to accept once and for all a high immediate fire, as kyiv has already done.
For this, the European Commission already prepares a new package of sanctions that will seek to “sit on Putin at the negotiating table,” said the president of the Community Executive, Ursula Von der Leyen, also from Tirana.
“Once again, Putin refuses to respond to a proposal of high unconditional fire presented by the Americans and supported by Ukraine and the Europeans,” said the French president, Emmanuel Macron, after analyzing the results of the Istanbul conversations with the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, and the prime ministers of the United Kingdom, Keir Starmer, and Poland, Donald Tusk, Donald Tusk, Donald Tusk Summit in the Albanian capital with President Ukraine, Volodimir Zelenski, which the four European leaders had visited in kyiv last Saturday. Via Telefónica, the US President Donald Trump also participated in the deliberations.
“By rejecting fire and dialogue with Ukraine, Russia demonstrates that it does not want peace and that it only seeks to gain time to continue with the war,” Macron criticized. Merz, who just a week ago said seeing a “great opportunity” to quickly close the 30 -day fire that allowed to negotiate a peace agreement now recognized that “diplomatic efforts have failed at the moment, due to the lack of will of Russia to take the first steps in the right direction.” “If Russia doesn’t want to sit at the negotiating table, Putin must pay the price,” Starmer warned.
Since his arrival in Tirana, Zelenski demanded from the international community a “blunt reaction”, with re -re -enforced sanctions in the financial and energy sector, if this Friday’s conversations with a low -level Russian delegation did not give tangible results, especially the “number one priority” of Ukraine: to immediately agree to “immediately” a high fire “total, unconditional and honest.”
Decimoctavo package
Among the summit attendees were the Slovak Prime Minister, Robert Fico, and Serbio Aleksandar Vucic, who just had the European warnings a week ago and participated in the Putin military parade in Moscow on May 9. Despite this (or despite them), the decision to increase the pressure through sanctions was widely supported by the main European leaders gathered in Tirana, who dedicated a good part of their time to analyze the Russian war in Ukraine and the lack of real will of Putin to finish it. In that context, von der Leyen confirmed that it is already working on a new and hardest package of the twenty -seven of sanctions, the eighteenth, before even that is formally approved, next Tuesday, the seventeenth.
As he said, among the main elements of the 18 package, there is a prohibition with respect to Nordstream 1 and 2. It is, the commission recognizes, a measure for now more than anything preventive, since today neither of the two gas pipelines are operational. The idea after imposing despite this sanctions, said a community spokeswoman from Brussels, is that “you never know what can happen”, so it is better to try to “dissuade any interest” in these gas pipelines, “especially investors, in performing any future activity with Nordstream.”
The only duct still in operation between Russia and the EU is the Turkstream, which starts from Anapa, in the Russian Caucasus, and crosses the black sea and part of Türkiye. Far from leding, the gas flow by this route rides in 2025 at maximum of a five years.
The part of the lion, however, is liquefied natural gas (LNG): far from falling, Russian fuel arrivals have increased from the energy crisis. And it is not yet clear how the European Commission will do to make possible its promise to dispense at the end of 2027 of the entire supply from the Euroasy country, reports Ignacio Fariza.
In 2021, before the Russian invasion of Ukraine and price shaking, 45% of the gas consumed by the twenty -seven was of Russian origin. This year, if Brussels projections are fulfilled, it should close around 13%. Brussels has just presented a plan to cut the entire purchase of Russian gas in 2027. A more important project if possible, since more and more European countries support a proposal by the American senator Lindsey Graham to impose tariffs of 500% to goods imported from any country that bought oil, gas, uranium and other assets of Russia if Moscow refuses to accept a peace agreement or, if once accepted, if once accepted, if once accepted, it is accepted to accept a peace agreement, if you are accepted to accept a peace agreement, you are accepted to accept a peace agreement, if you are accepted. Viola or invade Ukraine again.
From Tirana, von der Leyen also mentioned the intention to reduce in the next penalty package the top at the price of Russian oil even more-the current one set by the G-7 is 60 dollars per barrel-, further increase the number of ships of the Russian ghost fleet that will enter the European blacklist and “more penalties to the Russian financial sector”. “We want peace and it’s time for Putin to undertake seriously,” he said.
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