Talks of a Ukraine ceasefire have intensified, largely prompted by US President-elect Donald Trump’s determination "to stop the madness." We can bet that when an agreement is negotiated, Russia will ask for all sanctions to be lifted, but how will the West – and the EU – react?
Russian President Vladimir Putin apparently wants to freeze the current frontlines, and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, seems to accept that while raising the idea of foreign troops to be deployed in his country. He hopes to recover the occupied territories at a later stage via diplomacy.
French President Emmanuel Macron and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk are ready to pitch a European peacekeeping mission in Ukraine. But so far, nobody has publicly mentioned the sanctions, which will undoubtedly be an important part of the package.
The US administration under Joe Biden was determined that Russia “feels the pain” for having invaded Ukraine. The measures Washington adopted included sweeping financial sanctions and export controls that immediately impacted Russia’s economy, cut off Russia’s access to vital technological inputs, atrophied its industrial base, and undercut Moscow's strategic ambitions to exert influence on the world stage.
Similarly, the EU imposed massive and unprecedented sanctions aimed at imposing severe consequences on Russia for its actions and to effectively thwart Moscow's ability to continue its aggression. They come on top of the measures already imposed on Russia since 2014 following the annexation of Crimea and the lack of implementation of the Minsk agreements.
The EU economic sanctions target Russia’s financial, trade, energy, transport, technology and defence sectors, as well as services provided to the country or Russian nationals. They also target Belarus, due to its complicity with Russia, and Iran, in response to the manufacturing and provision of drones.
Agreeing the successive sanctions packages (15 so far) was undoubtedly a success of EU diplomacy, which each time secured the support of the 27 member states – despite many suffering consequences from the backfire of the restrictive measures and the Russian counter-sanctions.
