Europe Plans to Crack Down on Russia—but for Real This Time

The latest sanctions package is especially important because Moscow has received a shot of relief this spring, thanks to the Iran war and the Trump administration’s easing of sanctions. Russian energy revenues are now at more than two-year highs.

That explains why the European Commission is targeting energy this time, with measures meant to curtail Russian oil earnings; sanction more “shadow fleet” tankers; take aim at ports and refineries that allow Russia to do business even still; and limit the future sale of specialized gas tankers to Moscow. The latest proposed package also sanctions several more Russian banks, seeks to limit trade in items that can aid Russia’s defense industry, and will ban from Europe any Russian who has participated in the “special military operation” in Ukraine, as the Kremlin refers to it.

“Brick by brick, we are collapsing the foundations of Russia’s war economy,” European Union foreign-policy chief Kaja Kallas said Tuesday on X.

The latest EU sanctions are just a proposal and still need to be refined into final form and then passed by unanimous consent among the 27 EU states. The last 20 times, that was challenging because Hungary, previously Russia’s handmaiden inside Europe, sought to water down almost every attempt by Brussels to increase pressure on Moscow or offer relief to Kyiv. But Hungary has come in from the cold, leaving only a handful of possible objectors, such as Slovakia.

The package is timely because Russia is raking in money due to the fallout from the U.S.-Iran war, which drove up oil and natural gas prices. Additionally, the Trump administration has repeatedly offered Russia relief from previously levied sanctions to keep oil prices from exploding. The result has been a windfall for Moscow. 

“The conflict in the Middle East and disruptions to global energy supply chains have eased some pressure on Russia,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a statement. “So, the objective of our package could not be clearer. We want to maintain the full intensity of our sanctions.”

In May, Russia’s energy export revenues climbed another 2 percent over the already-high levels of April to 726 million euros per day, according to the Finland-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), which tracks Russian energy earnings during the war. Crude oil loadings at the key Baltic Sea port of Ust-Luga, which Ukraine hammered in March and April with drone strikes, were up almost 50 percent in May.

“Russia is sailing in terms of earnings from oil and natural gas,” said Isaac Levi, the head of Russia research at CREA. 

“The sanctions were having a big impact before February of this year,” he said, but then the gulf between the price of discounted Russian crude oil and global benchmarks closed, as countries everywhere scrambled to replace missing barrels of oil due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. waivers in particular cleared up a backlog of stranded Russian tankers and allowed Russia to ramp up production at its oilfields. 

“The Trump administration has basically dealt [Russian President Vladimir] Putin a blank check,” Levi said.

That sudden premium for Russian oil is one reason that one of the proposed EU measures—a tweak to the system it uses to try to cap the price at which Russia can sell its oil—is unlikely to do much, according to Levi. “The oil price cap is basically dead in the water,” he said.

But there are plenty of positives in the latest EU sanctions package. The moves to sanction ports and refineries that traffic in refined petroleum products from Russian crude is a step in the right direction, Levi said, since prior efforts to curtail the trade in gasoline, diesel, and other products have suffered from lax enforcement. 

“If they go after refineries that violate sanctions, that could discourage countries that are buying Russian oil,” he said.

Another encouraging move is the addition of 30 vessels to the 632 “shadow fleet” tankers already on the EU’s black list, though that measure would be a lot more effective if it were coupled with action from the United States, which has a much better global enforcement capacity. (The Trump administration has not taken any steps to increase sanctions on Russia’s shadow fleet since January 2025.)

But one glaring hole in the EU’s sanctions regime is Russia’s natural gas trade. Brussels sought to curtail the trade of Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) in earlier sanctions, but it hasn’t found the formula yet. Through May, European imports of Russian LNG from the Arctic were up nearly 18 percent, a multibillion euro bonus for Moscow, with Spain the biggest consumer, according to data compiled by Urgewald, a German environmental and human rights group that tracks Russian energy finances.

“From 2027, there will be a complete ban on Russian LNG, but in the meantime, everybody is trying to get as much gas as they can,” said Sebastian Rötters, a sanctions analyst at Urgewald. 

And while the EU is proposing to restrict the sale of new LNG tankers to Russia—it is a real vulnerability, since the country cannot make the sophisticated ships on its own—Russia so far has found ways to keep its growing Arctic gas operations afloat. And it may have found even more: Novatek, the big Russian gas company, is reportedly in talks to acquire as many as 10 ice-class LNG tankers from Japanese and South Korean suppliers. (Ice-class tankers are important because Russia’s natural gas export facilities, and some of its export routes, are in the actual Arctic.)

“This would undermine the whole EU LNG tanker sales ban and would allow Novatek to increase exports a lot,” Rötters said.

Ultimately, the fact that the world’s largest economic bloc has already tried 20 times to tighten the screws on Russia’s seemingly vulnerable economy suggests that Brussels, if not the West as a whole, has moved too timidly to sanction Russia over the past four years, allowing the war to drag on. 

“That we are still buying more Russian LNG than before is ridiculous. The sanctions have been incremental, and in many cases have had limited impact, because the windup is so slow and Russia can often find workarounds,” Levi said.

Seen from another angle, though, “you could say it is a miracle they passed so many packages before,” said Rötters, noting the EU’s requirement that sanctions get unanimous sign-off from all 27 member states, even those that are friendly to Russia. Now may be the first chance to really clamp down on Moscow’s warmaking ability.

This 21st package, he said, “will be the first discussed without [former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor] Orban, so now there is nobody to hide behind. Right now is a moment of truth for some member states.”