KYIV: Russian forces have taken partial control of a key industrial city in eastern Ukraine, a regional governor said Tuesday, hours after European Union leaders struck a deal to ban more than two-thirds of Moscow’s oil imports.
Severodonetsk is one of several urban hubs that lie on Russia’s path to capturing the Donbas’s Lugansk region, where Moscow has shifted the bulk of its firepower since failing to capture Kyiv in the war’s early stages.
“The situation is extremely complicated. Part of Severodonetsk is controlled by the Russians,” Lugansk regional governor Sergiy Gaiday said in a statement on social media, adding that Ukrainian troops still retained some areas.
But as Russian troops edged closer to the Severodonetsk city center, officials in Brussels were tightening the economic screws on Moscow.
A compromise deal reached late Monday, meant to punish Russia for its invasion three months ago, cuts “a huge source of financing for its war machine,” European Council chief Charles Michel tweeted.
“Maximum pressure on Russia to end the war,” he said.
Tonight #EUCO agreed a sixth package of sanctions.
It will allow a ban on oil imports from #Russia.
The sanctions will immediately impact 75% of Russian oil imports. And by the end of the year, 90% of the Russian oil imported in Europe will be banned. pic.twitter.com/uVoVI519v8
— Charles Michel (@eucopresident) May 30, 2022
Leaders of the 27-nation bloc met to negotiate the long-sought deal amid concerns raised by Hungary and other neighboring countries reliant on Russian fuel.
The agreement also includes plans for the EU to send nine billion euros ($9.7 billion) in “immediate liquidity” to Kyiv, Michel announced.
Hours earlier, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had called an oil embargo the “key point” to any sanctions package.
“I believe that Europe will have to give up Russian oil and oil products in any case, because this is about the independence of Europeans themselves from (weaponized) Russian energy,” he said in his daily address to the nation.
The Netherlands on Tuesday became the latest European country to have its Russian gas shipments halted after refusing to pay in rubles, a demand Moscow is making of “unfriendly countries” in a bid to sidestep crippling Western sanctions.
“Gazprom has completely stopped gas supplies to (Dutch Energy Firm) GasTerra due to non-payment in rubles,” the Russian gas giant said in a morning statement.
