European Union Caps Russian Oil At $60 Per Barrel

The oil price ceiling will be accompanied by an EU ban on Russian oil imports.

Brussels:

The EU on Friday joined the G7 in agreeing to limit Russian oil prices to cut the Kremlin’s resources for the war in Ukraine, as President Vladimir Putin said attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure were “nothing”. avoidable”.

The price ceiling of $60 per barrel, previously agreed at the political level with the United States and the G7 group of rich democracies, will come into force with the EU embargo on Russian crude from Monday.

The embargo would block Russian crude oil shipments by tanker to the EU, which accounts for two-thirds of imports, potentially depriving Russia of billions of euros of war funding.

Poland had refused to support the price ceiling plan, fearing it would be too high, before the country’s ambassador to the bloc confirmed the Warsaw deal on Friday evening, allowing the measure to be formally implemented on Friday. this weekend.

The EU’s Czech president and diplomats from other member states said the deal had been confirmed and that the bureaucratic procedure to put it into force was underway.

The price cap is designed to make it harder for selling outside the EU to bypass sanctions.

Poland’s ambassador to the bloc, Andrzej Sados, also said Brussels would consider proposals by Poland and the Baltic states for a “painful and expensive” ninth round of sanctions against Moscow.

– Infrastructure strike ‘inevitable’ –

After suffering humiliating defeats in Europe’s biggest armed conflict since World War II, Russia began targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in October, causing massive loss of power. wide area electricity.

President Vladimir Putin said Russian attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure were “inevitable”, in his first phone conversation with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz since mid-September.

“Such measures have become a mandatory and inevitable response to Kiev’s provocative attacks on Russian civilian infrastructure,” Putin told Scholz, according to the statement. Kremlin about the call.

The Kremlin leader specifically mentioned the October attack on the bridge connecting the Crimean peninsula, which Moscow annexed to the Russian mainland.

During the hour-long call, Scholz “urged the Russian president to quickly reach a diplomatic solution including the withdrawal of Russian troops,” according to the German leader’s spokesman Steffen Hebestreit.

The Kremlin said Mr Putin had called on Berlin to “reconsider its approach” and accused the West of carrying out “destructive” policies in Ukraine, stressing that its political and financial aid was not the only thing that could be done. they mean Kiev “totally rejects the idea of ​​any negotiations”.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky ruled out any negotiations with Russia during Putin’s time in power shortly after the Kremlin announced it had annexed parts of Ukraine.

– Don’t talk about it –

The Kremlin also said Moscow was not in the mood for negotiations over Ukraine, after US President Joe Biden said he was ready to sit down with Putin if the Russian leader really wanted to end the fighting.

“In fact, what did President Biden say? He said that negotiations can only be done after Putin leaves Ukraine,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, adding: Moscow is “certainly” not ready to accept those conditions.

Russian attacks have destroyed nearly half of Ukraine’s energy system and left millions of people living in darkness and cold as winter sets in.

In the latest estimate from Kiev, Mykhaylo Podolyak, an adviser to Zelensky, said up to 13,000 Ukrainian soldiers were killed in the fighting.

Both Moscow and Kiev are suspected of minimizing losses to avoid damaging military morale.

Last month, top US general Mark Milley said that more than 100,000 Russian servicemen had been killed or wounded in Ukraine, and that Kiev’s forces were likely to suffer similar casualties.

– ‘We are not defeated’ –

The war in Ukraine has also claimed the lives of thousands of Ukrainian civilians and forced millions to flee their homes.

Those remaining in the country have had to deal with emergency power outages as authorities seek to ease the pressure on energy infrastructure.

In an effort to lift the mood in the capital, Kyiv, musicians staged a classical concert on Thursday with hundreds of LED candles lighting up the stage.

Irina Mikolaenko, one of the concert organizers, told AFP: “We think saving energy is a good idea.

She said they wanted to spread “inspiration, light and love” and “tell people that we are not defeated”.

Ukrainian officials say they are expecting a new wave of Russian attacks shortly.

(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from an aggregated feed.)