Thu 23 October 2025:

The European Union has passed its latest package of sanctions on Russia, the bloc’s foreign policy chief announced on Thursday.

“We just adopted our 19th sanctions package. It targets Russian banks, crypto exchanges, entities in India and China, among others,” Kaja Kallas wrote on the US social media company X.

The EU is also curbing Russian diplomats’ movements “to counter the attempts of destabilization,” she added.

“It is increasingly harder for (Russian President Vladimir) Putin to fund this war,” Kallas added about the Ukraine war, which is set to mark its fourth anniversary early next year.

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Trump hits Russia’s oil giants with sanctions,

United States President Donald Trump has imposed sanctions on Russia for the first time since returning to the White House, citing a lack of progress in ceasefire talks to end Moscow’s war on Ukraine. The same day, European Union leaders approved their 19th Russian sanctions package.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the sanctions would target Russia’s two largest oil companies, Lukoil and Rosneft, due to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “refusal to end this senseless war” in Ukraine and Moscow’s “lack of serious commitment” to the peace process.

“Today’s actions increase pressure on Russia’s energy sector and degrade the Kremlin’s ability to raise revenue for its war machine and support its weakened economy,” Bessent said in a statement on Wednesday.

“We encourage our allies to join us in and adhere to these sanctions,” he said.

The measures taken by the Department of the Treasury, which also sanctioned dozens of Rosneft and Lukoil subsidiaries, block the US assets of the designated firms, while preventing Americans from doing business with them. Notably absent from the US sanctions were Chinese and Indian buyers of Russian oil.

Trump said on Wednesday that he would raise concerns about China’s purchases of Russian oil during his sit-down with President Xi Jinping at the 2025 APEC summit in South Korea next week.

The US Treasury Department also said it was prepared to take further action if Russia continues to wage its more-than-three-year war in Ukraine.

Russia has yet to issue a public response to the US measures.

EU turns up the heat

Washington’s sanctions were announced on the same day as the EU said it had also approved its 19th package of sanctions against Moscow over its war against Ukraine, including an EU ban on Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports.

“We are very pleased to announce that we have just been notified by the remaining member state that it’s now able to lift its reservation on the 19th sanctions package,” the Danish rotating presidency of the EU said in a statement.

Slovakia had been holding out after the EU agreed on the final text last week. Prime Minister Robert Fico was seeking assurances from the European Commission on high energy prices and aligning climate targets with the needs of carmakers and heavy industry.

New clauses meeting Slovakia’s demands were added to the final communique on the new package of sanctions in advance of the EU leaders’ summit in Brussels on Thursday, a Slovak diplomat told the Reuters news agency.

The new package will see short-term LNG contracts with Russia end after six months, and long-term contracts end from January 1, 2027.

The sanctions also add new travel restrictions on Russian diplomats and list 117 more vessels from Moscow’s shadow fleet of clandestine sanctions-evading vessels, bringing the total to 558, as well as banks in Kazakhstan and Belarus.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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