Ukraine and European leaders agreed on Saturday to an unconditional 30-day ceasefire from 12 May with the backing of US president Donald Trump, threatening president Vladimir Putin with new “massive” sanctions if he failed to comply.
The announcement was made by the leaders of Britain, France, Germany, Poland and Ukraine after a meeting in Kyiv, during which they held a phone call with Trump.
What’s left to even sanction Russia with at this point? You can’t threaten someone with something you already did 4 years ago.
Well Russian travelers preferentail treatment while applying for European visas has been cancelled, so now they have to wait for visas like everyone else. So things are getting pretty serious.
“Russian citizens can still obtain Schengen visas to travel to Europe, but they may face a more challenging application process and potentially higher refusal rates. The EU has suspended the Visa Facilitation Agreement with Russia, meaning Russian citizens no longer enjoy preferential treatment when applying for visas”
Actually enforcing the sanctions? Fighting loopholes? Remove exceptions? Reduce gas imports? There’s still plenty of room.
There are some, and well know by the West in other to appease some EU region that cannot easily accommodate for the sanctions. Do you really, really, think is would it, in any shape or form, even noticeably by Moscow? Their economy is much faster growing with respect the EU and far more diversified in customers than 4 yrs ago (they need now to do it also in types of exported goods). Fr sure, Russia would like to normalize relations with the West, but if you give Moscow the choice of 5Billions trade in the West for the cost of 1Billion from Asia, he will chose to maintain the Asian one without any further thought.
Maybe actually do it.