His country is particularly dependent on Russian oil.
(Photo: IMAGO/Xinhua)
The EU has agreed on the details of the sixth package of sanctions against Russia, with Hungary pushing through another change at short notice. At the urging of Viktor Orban’s government, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, will not be included on the list of sanctioned persons.
Kirill participates in Russian state propaganda and justified the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. Therefore, he should be banned from entering the EU and possible assets should be frozen, as has been the case with other people close to the Kremlin.
However, Orban said he wanted to protect freedom of belief and Hungarian religious communities. Although the heads of state and government agreed politically on a package of sanctions earlier in the week, the Hungarian ambassador to the EU dropped the technical level meeting on Wednesday on this grounds. On Thursday, the ambassadors met again and finally agreed not to put Kirill on the sanctions list. Hungary then agreed.
Pipeline oil remains allowed
New to the list are other members of the Russian security apparatus, particularly those believed to be connected to the Bucha massacre. Unless an EU country lodges another objection, the sanctions should come into force on Friday at 9 a.m.
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The core of the sanctions package is a partial oil embargo. From 2023, no more Russian oil should reach the EU by sea. Crude oil imports are to be phased out six months after the package comes into force, and processed oil products are to be allowed to be bought for two months longer.
The head of the Russian Orthodox Church takes part in Russian state propaganda and justified Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine.
(Photo: dpa)
For the time being, it remains legal to get oil through pipelines. According to the EU decision, it should only be banned “as soon as possible”. The Hungarian government had also fought for this exception. The country has no coast and can therefore only replace Russian oil with transport via foreign ports at great expense.
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Slovakia and the Czech Republic can also continue to obtain oil from the Druzhba pipeline. Meanwhile, Hungary had requested large grants to fund the construction of new oil pipelines that would connect the country to seaports. This has not yet been decided.
In addition, a regulation that has not yet been precisely defined is intended to prevent cheap pipeline oil from Hungary from being resold to other EU countries.
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Germany and Poland, which are also connected to the Russian oil wells by pipeline, have already announced that they no longer want to use this. According to the Commission’s expectations, the EU countries will thus forego 90 percent of their oil imports from Russia by the end of the year. So far, according to estimates, they have been paying almost half a billion euros to Russia for the oil every day.
Strike against financial market
Part of the punitive package is also to ban transactions with Russia’s Sberbank and decouple it from the Swift system. Although six banks have already been sanctioned, their total assets are smaller than those of Sberbank alone: Sberbank manages around 460 billion euros, which is almost a third of the total assets of all Russian ‧banks.
Since the Swift system is also used outside of Europe, this sanction may further weaken Russia’s trade. The most important non-sanctioned bank is Gazprombank. She is spared so that oil and gas payments can continue. In addition to Sberbank, the Credit Bank of Moscow, the Russian Agricultural Bank and another Belarusian bank are also excluded.
In addition, other high-tech goods and chemicals are on the list of goods that can no longer be exported from Europe to Russia. And the distribution of other Russian propaganda media in the EU will be banned.
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