EU shores up defence against Russia energy threats

GBNews24 Desk//

European Union ministers met Monday to respond to Russia cutting gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria — and discuss plans for a possible oil embargo to punish Moscow for invading Ukraine.

The energy ministers from the 27 member states were coordinating efforts to counter what Brussels has branded the Kremlin’s bid to “blackmail” the West with threatened energy shortages.

The EU is also working on a phased ban on Russian oil imports, hoping to cut off funding for its war effort and assert energy independence from Moscow.

“We will support full sanctions on all Russian fossil fuels. We already have coal — now it’s time for oil,” said Anna Moskwa, Poland’s environment minister.

But Poland is among the more hawkish member states. Others, such as Germany, are wary of the economic hurt a wider ban on Russian energy would bring.

So no decision on an oil embargo was expected Monday. Diplomats and European Commission experts are still working towards a proposal for an eventual sixth sanctions package.

Instead, the ministers discussed technical ways to wean their economies off Russian energy supplies.

They also looked at how to support countries that have provoked the Kremlin’s wrath, such as Bulgaria and Poland, whose gas deliveries were halted last week.

France’s ecological transition minister Barbara Pompili, whose country holds the EU presidency, said she had called the emergency meeting to “ensure our solidarity with our colleagues from Bulgaria and Poland.”

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has demanded “unfriendly countries” — which includes all EU states — pay for their gas in rubles, which Warsaw and Sofia refused.

Doing so would involve western clients depositing in euros or dollars in a bank run by Russian state energy giant Gazprom, to be converted into rubles and moved to a second Gazprombank account.