The head of the EU executive also said the Commission would look to lower the oil price cap, a limit on the sales price for Russian crude oil which is decided at G7 level.
Targeting Russia’s energy and banking sectors would have a “real impact” on the Kremlin, but doing so would be tricky because of Hungarian opposition, an EU diplomat, who was granted anonymity to discuss the preparations, told POLITICO earlier this week.
Asked by POLITICO whether the United States was on board with the new raft of sanctions, von der Leyen said she was “in close contact with Senator [Lindsey] Graham,” the U.S. Republican senator who is a vocal critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Graham has proposed a package of punitive 500 percent tariffs on Russia.
“We are very much aligned on the fields where the sanctions must be,” von der Leyen said.
While Graham is a Donald Trump ally, the U.S. president has not publicly indicated he is ready to enact such punishing sanctions on Russia. Trump told reporters on Thursday there would be no progress toward peace in Ukraine until he meets with Putin, as much-hyped Moscow-Kyiv talks in Turkey turned into a huge nothingburger.
Delegations from the two countries sat down in Istanbul on Friday for the first direct talks since shortly after the start of Russia’s invasion in 2022, but Putin’s decision to skip talks and send a lower-level delegations has been read as an unwillingness to engage in peace discussions
