The European Commission is considering sanctions against Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG), according to two EU diplomats, a move that would mark the first time Brussels has dared to go after Moscow’s gas sector. The Commission, the EU’s executive, is currently preparing a 14th package of sanctions against Russia more than two years after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his troops into Ukraine. The new measures could include restrictions on three Russian LNG projects, and on the re-export of Russian LNG from EU ports, the diplomats said. So far, Brussels has imposed a blanket ban on ..read more

Anchal Vohra is a Brussels-based international affairs commentator. She lived in Beirut until recently. The war in Ukraine has exposed the fabled prowess of Russian weaponry as a myth and scared off its leading overseas client. India — the world’s biggest arms importer — is drastically reducing dependence on Russian weapons, and is unlikely to make any new purchases from Russia. Earmarking $100 billion for future procurement, this now leaves a potential opening for Western arms manufacturers. Over the last two decades, India spent $60 billion on weapons from Russia, but according to the latest ..read more

President Joe Biden took to the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal Wednesday to ramp up the pressure on Congress to pass foreign aid legislation that would help bolster Ukrainian and Israeli defenses and deliver humanitarian assistance to Gaza. “Now is not the time to abandon our friends. The House must pass urgent national-security legislation for Ukraine and Israel, as well as desperately needed humanitarian aid for Palestinians in Gaza,” Biden wrote in the op-ed, promising that the U.S. would not “write blank checks,” to either country. “We’d send military equipment from our ow ..read more

Ukraine is heading for defeat The West’s failure to send weapons to Kyiv is helping Putin win his war. By JAMIE DETTMER in Kyiv If the tide doesn’t turn soon in this third year of Russia’s invasion, it will be the nation of Ukraine as it currently exists that is consigned to the past. | John Moore /Getty Images Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe. Just ask a Ukrainian soldier if he still believes the West will stand by Kyiv “for as long as it takes.” That pledge rings hollow when it’s been four weeks since your artillery unit last had a shell to fire, as one ser ..read more

LONDON ― In politics, reality rarely matches rhetoric. And the reality is Britain will probably never seize Russia’s money. Plenty of bold words have been bandied about since Russia launched its illegal invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. In Britain’s capital — nicknamed “Londongrad” for its reputation as a playground for Russian oligarchs — Cabinet Minister Michael Gove called for the mansions of Russian magnates to be seized to house Ukrainian refugees.  Others suggested taking the Russian assets in Britain’s banks to help fund Ukraine’s defense, or to help rebuild Ukraine after the w ..read more

The General Court of the European Union on Wednesday took Russian billionaires Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven off an EU sanctions list. It said that there isn’t sufficient evidence the two businessmen supported Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine. “The General Court considers that none of the reasons set out in the initial acts is sufficiently substantiated and that the inclusion of Mr Aven and Mr Fridman on the lists at issue was therefore not justified,” the court said in a statement.   Fridman and Aven, who are both major shareholders of Alfa Group, one of Russia’s la ..read more

Bulgaria’s outgoing Prime Minister Nikolai Denkov spent his mandate trying to boot out the Russians, and has no doubt that Moscow will redouble efforts to recover its influence now his administration has collapsed. Denkov, who stepped down on Tuesday, told POLITICO that his pro-Western and pro-Ukrainian government had managed to cut the country’s energy dependence on Russia; deported more than 80 secret agents posing as diplomats; and introduced a fact-checking program for national media to counter Russian disinformation. But his coalition administration fell victim to infighting, and the ensu ..read more

Samir Puri is an associate fellow at Chatham House, a visiting lecturer at King’s College London and the author of “Russia’s Road to War with Ukraine.” While Russian President Vladimir Putin’s overwhelming election victory was expected —preordained, actually — his regime’s resistance to Western sanctions continues to surprise. The U.S. and its allies understand that their measures could be tighter — the current price cap on Russian oil, for example, only crimps exports to Europe. And yet, expectations held as late as the winter of 2023 were that the policy could derail the Kremlin’s war effort ..read more

The European Union on Friday sanctioned 33 individuals and two entities in response to the mysterious death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in an Arctic penal colony last month. “Alexei Navalny’s slow killing by the Kremlin regime is a stark reminder of its utter disregard for human life,” top EU diplomat Josep Borrell said. “Today’s sanctions demonstrate our determination to hold Russia’s political leadership and authorities accountable for the continuing violation of human rights in Russia.” The sanctioned individuals include Russian officials from the judicial and penitentiary s ..read more

Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.  KYIV — Wishing something were true doesn’t make it so. And yet, for the past two years, we’ve had a plethora of predictions suggesting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s days are numbered, that Russians will turn on him or that he’ll be ousted in a Kremlin coup by oligarchs and Russia’s elite, now targeted by Western sanctions and angry over their frozen overseas assets. Even Mikhail Kasyanov, Putin’s prime minister from 2000 to 2004, had confidently predicted that the president’s grip on power could slip abruptly: “In three or four mon ..read more