Took 'em long enough...

 

The question to ask is 'why do these people drag their feet so often on important items like this? They didn't blink when it came to shutting down their countries and destroying their own economies, but this? More than two months too late.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday said the EU would impose a gradual Russian oil ban in retaliation for the war in Ukraine. The proposals need to be unanimously approved to take effect and are likely to be the subject of fierce debate.

Von der Leyen, addressing the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, conceded that getting all 27 member countries — some of them landlocked and highly dependent on Russia for energy supplies — to agree on oil sanctions 'will not be easy.'

The bloc is aiming to phase out crude oil from Russia within six months, and refined products by the end of the year. 

'We will make sure that we phase out Russian oil in an orderly fashion,' von der Leyen said in speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg as she presented a sixth package of sanctions against Moscow to deny funding to the war effort against Ukraine.

Von der Leyen also said the EU would ask that the bloc's 27 member states to deny Sberbank, Russia's biggest bank, access to SWIFT, the global banking communications system. Sberbank holds around 37% of the Russian banking sector, said Von der Leyen.

'And we will also de-SWIFT two other major banks in Russia. By that, we hit banks that are systemically critical to the Russian financial system and Putin's ability to wage destruction,' she said.

She said the European Union had to maximise the pressure on Russia but ensure that the economies of its member states remain strong in order to be effective in their support for Ukraine.

If approved, the ban on oil imports will be the second package of EU sanctions targeting Russia's lucrative energy industry over its war in Ukraine that President Vladimir Putin started on February 24.